In Ministry - Stories

rss

Click on the link above to return to the latest update.


September 9, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Like many other Adrian Dominican Sisters, Sister Carol Gross, OP, started out as a classroom teacher and, over the years, branched out to other ministries: religious education, parish ministry, pastoral ministry, and spiritual direction. But she also branched out geographically: from her native Ohio to Michigan and, for the last 31 years, to the Dominican Republic. She retired and returned to the Motherhouse in Adrian, Michigan, in June 2022 – with many stories to tell of her various ministries in the Dominican Republic. 
 

Sister Carol holding an infant
Sister Carol Gross, OP, shortly after she began her ministry in the Dominican Republic.

Ministry in the Dominican Republic

Sister Carol began this change in ministry after seven years of ministry at a parish. “I was approaching burnout and was thinking of a sabbatical to learn Spanish,” she recalled. In 1990-1991, she went to the Dominican Republic for her Spanish studies. “I was there 13 weeks and I fell in love with the Dominican people – their joy, their resiliency, their inventiveness and spontaneity,” she recalled. 

She returned to the United States and received permission to return to the Dominican Republic for ministry. She began slowly, becoming involved with pastoral ministry and religious education at Seccion San Jose. “I worked mostly in [nearby] Villa Fundación and did some ministry in other villages.”
 

Sister Carol speaking with a woman in a clinic
Sister Carol Gross, OP, with an assistant at Hope for Haina.

Ministry in Haina

Most of Sister Carol’s time in the Dominican Republic was spent in Haina, not far from the nation’s capital, Santo Domingo. “Haina is a very dense poor area,” with a population of about 15,000 people when Sister Carol ministered there from 1996 to 2012. Today, she said, the population is closer to 20,000 to 25,000. 

Sister Carol was involved in the lives of the people of Haina, first in one of the Christian communities of the local parish. The parish of about 15,000 people was divided into local communities – first 30 and later 35. “Each community had its own council, catechism, and adult formation group,” she recalled. She ministered in one of those communities, which ultimately divided into two.

During her first years there, a priest celebrated Mass in her community on the first Tuesday and the fourth Friday of each month. On Sundays, the community gathered for Liturgy of the Word. “Starting out, we did most of the planning, but by the time we finished, 17 or 18 people were [leading] the Liturgy of the Word on Sunday,” Sister Carol explained. “I would [prepare] a guide for the prayers and a guide for the homily,” which mostly consisted of questions and dialogues by members of the community. 

Sister Carol was also involved in parish-wide ministry, working with the parish catechetical team. In 2005, the parish started Hope for Haina, a medical clinic, which began in the church sacristy. 

The clinic includes a general practitioner, a pediatrician, and a dentist and next year will include a psychologist to work with adolescent mothers, Sister Carol said. The clinic also offers a special program for insulin-dependent diabetics and an ultrasound – and will soon add an electrocardiogram. “We’re able to provide some medicines and we have a very small but important nutrition program,” she said. 

The clinic was supported by grants, including $5,000 from St. Owen Parish in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and $5,000 from the Conrad Hilton Foundation, she said. In addition, the Adrian Dominican Congregation has helped to sponsor Hope for Haina through Ministry Trust grants given to community organizations in which Adrian Dominican Sisters are involved, and through mission appeals given by Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates to participating parishes throughout the United States. Hope for Haina has also received grants from Dignity Health – now CommonSpirit Health – the healthcare systems to which the Congregation’s hospitals have belonged. Sister Carol continues to work with grants for the clinic.
 

Sister Carol with a group of people posing
Sister Carol Gross, OP, with members of the spiritual direction team in Haina, Dominican Republic.

Spiritual Direction

Sister Carol sitting in a chapel with a nun
Sister Carol Gross, left, works with one of 12 contemplative nuns participating in a four-week course, Introduction to Spiritual Companioning, in the Dominican Republic in 2017.

In 2012, Sister Carol moved her focus to ministry in the areas of San Juan Bautista, Villa Fundación, and Santo Domingo. “I did a lot of pastoral work, a lot of catechesis, a certain amount of administration, and spiritual direction,” she said. “The last seven years has been mostly spiritual direction, the formation of spiritual directors, and the clinic.”

Sister Carol began her involvement in spiritual direction in 2002, when she and Sisters Ana Feliz, OP, and Nancy Jurecki, OP, took a spiritual companioning course sponsored by the Conference of Religious of the Dominican Republic (CONDOR). 

Sister Carol went on to teach the course, at first mostly to women religious. “We’ve had lots of religious, but lately it’s been lots of lay people, mostly women,” Sister Carol said. The program also offers workshops for priests – six classes over six weeks, she said. At one point, she and her spiritual direction team offered a four-week course, Introduction to Spiritual Companioning, to 12 cloistered nuns from six monasteries and traditions.

Sister Carol also taught spiritual direction in the master’s program offered by the Catholic University of Santo Domingo. “When the pandemic came along, they asked me to teach the course online,” she recalled. “I never saw [the students] in person until they had a good-bye party for me.” She will teach a new course for supervisors of spiritual direction students.

 

Take-aways

As Sister Carol reflects on her time in the Dominican Republic, she said she has learned much. “I learned that you don’t have to have a lot to be happy,” she said. “You don’t have to be super-educated to be happy. You can live and love and give.” She was impressed by the message of young man as he directed a Liturgy of the Word: “A poor person is one who has nothing to give.” 

Sister Carol has seen that generous act of giving among people who are materially poor – but also among those who have money, including graduates of the Santo Domingo Colegio where Adrian Dominican Sisters once taught. “They’re super-generous with their time and with what they have,” she said. “They always have something to give and could not be outdone in generosity.”

Sister Carol is also impressed and inspired by the Adrian Dominican Associates in the Dominican Republic. “They range from people who have practically nothing to people who are very, very comfortable,” but they all have something to give and are generous with their time. 

She is also grateful for the support of the Congregation as she ministered in the Dominican Republic. “I’ve had wonderful opportunities, [but] I never had anything that paid” monetarily, she said. Still, she added, “I got paid a lot because I was paid with a lot of joy.” 


Specify Alternate Text

October 29, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – In 26 years of mission work in three countries, Sister Maurine Barzantni has experienced a variety of cultures, languages, and life situations. But in all of those situations, she found people who struggled for a better life for their children and who showed incredible generosity and hospitality to visitors.

Sister Maurine’s service in the missions began in 1990 in the Dominican Republic, where she and the late Sister Renee Richie, OP, worked for 10 years with the people of Sección San José de Arroyo Hondo. The Sisters worked with the people of this small barrio, or village, listening to their needs and helping them to fulfill those needs. 

Celebrating the 25th anniversary in September 2019 of Fe y Alegría Espiritu Santo School in the Dominican Republic are, from left, Sisters Basilia De la Cruz, OP; Mary Ann Caulfield, OP, Chapter Prioress; Maria Eneida Santiago, OP; Neri (Luchy) Sori, OP; and Maurine Barzantni, OP.

During that time, the people were able to establish a health clinic, pharmacy, and school. Espiritu Santo School, part of Fe y Alegría, a Jesuit system of schools, grew from a few children learning under a tree to a school of 1,500 students from kindergarten through high school. Espiritu Santo recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. 

“I think of my experience in the Dominican Republic as a community organizing venture, and out of that community organizing came health services and then the school,” Sister Maurine said. “We never dreamt of starting a school. It came out of the development of the community.” 

After leaving the Dominican Republic in 2010, Sisters Maurine and Renee – along with Sisters Kathryn Cliatt, OP, and Christa Marsik, OP – began their ministry at St. Clare Girls’ Centre in Meru, Kenya. The orphanage takes in girls who have been orphaned and those who seek safety from dangers such as being sold as child brides.

“The community made a commitment of four Sisters for three years to be grandmothers to 250 orphaned girls,” Sister Maurine said. Each of the Sisters also offered her own focus. Sister Maurine offered the girls the opportunity to do painting and drawing. “It started out being just an invitation, but the teachers asked that it be part of the curriculum,” she said.

From 2013 to 2016, Sisters Maurine and Renee were invited to serve in Northern British Columbia, Canada, to offer their presence to indigenous people, members of the Carrier Nation, on four reservations. They served as pastoral assistants to Father Fran Salmon, OMI, Pastor of Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Fort St. James. 

Sister Maurine speaks with a woman from the First Nation community in Northern British Columbia, circa 2015.

“The Carrier Nation not only survived, but had a vibrant community because they worked together,” Sister Maurine recalled. “They didn’t lose their traditional values and traditional way of life. They taught their children how to fish, hunt, trap, and prepare food for the winter season. They preserved their Carrier language and all that kept them united as a community.”

Sister Maurine said she has seen a similar spirit wherever she has ministered. “People who struggle for survival have incredible skills for living together, building solidarity in a community, because they need each other to survive,” she said. “People who struggle for survival also have a deep trust in the presence of the Divine.”

Sister Maurine also recalled the “generous hospitality” that she found in every place where she ministered. She gave the example of the Dominican Republic, where the small community was often visited by high school, college, and medical groups. “The people who had nothing, living in small, small houses without any conveniences, would welcome the visitors with big smiles and would say to us, ‘How is it that they would want to visit us?’ They felt that the presence of visitors was a gift to them.”

She acknowledged the challenges inherent in missionary work – differences in language and “accustoming oneself to a whole different environment.” Still, Sister Maurine said she loved every place she served. “Just the welcoming by the people and the appreciation and willingness of the people to really work for and struggle for a better life for their children” brought her joy, she said.

Her involvement in missionary work always came through an invitation, Sister Maurine said. “Invitation is the strongest vehicle for a calling,” she said. “We call it a vocation in the religious community, but a vocation is a calling. From my earliest years, I was always drawn to the poorest communities,” even in the U.S. cities, she said.

Sister Maurine has advice for anyone who is interested in serving in the missions. “Just say ‘yes’ and be very patient with yourself. Be present. Don’t try to do anything. The people will tell you what they need and sometimes you can help them achieve those goals – and sometimes you can’t. Even if you can’t, your presence is still valuable.”

Feature photo (top): From left, Sisters Kathryn Cliatt, OP, Maurine Barzantni, OP, the late Renee Richie, OP, and Christa Marsik, OP, at their home in Meru, Kenya, circa 2010.


Specify Alternate Text

October 11, 2018, Adrian, Michigan – In her 35 years of ministry with the people of Forsyth County, Georgia, Sister Kathryn Cliatt, OP, was involved in helping to build resilient communities long before the term became popular – and before it was a focus one of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ 2016 General Chapter Enactments.

Sister Kathryn and her work in Forsyth County were recounted in a recent issue of Parish Neighbors of Cumming Catholic Magazine.

“I’ve always been called to serve the poor,” Sister Kathryn said in a recent interview at the Motherhouse in Adrian. “My mother did. She took care of everybody in the neighborhood. If they were sick, she sent me over to their house with a meal and a note saying to call her if they needed a ride to the doctor.”

After entering the Adrian Dominican Congregation and teaching in elementary schools in Chicago and Florida, Sister Kathryn felt a conformation of her call to serve the poor while ministering as a guidance counselor at Tampa Catholic High School. “We were a Catholic public school,” she explained. “We took anybody regardless of ability to pay.” Because the students wore uniforms, the students from poor families could not be distinguished from classmates from other families.

Sister Kathryn was assigned to minister at Tampa Catholic, but after the 1968 Chapter of Renewal, when the Congregation changed to an open placement system, Sister Kathryn felt the call to serve the poor, she said.

Sister Kathryn – with Sisters Joanne Peters, OP, June Racicot, OP, and Jean Cassidy, OP – did research and discernment during the summer of 1974. In that research they found that the Southeast was the “poorest and least served by the Church” in the United States, they began their ministry in North Georgia with the Appalachian people who were poor. Sister Kathryn served in Forsyth County, Georgia – in northern Georgia, the southern-most county of Appalachia – from 1975 to 2010, when she felt the call to minister at an orphanage in Kenya with three other Adrian Dominican Sisters.

The Sisters’ ministries in Forsyth County grew from the ground up, and were based on the needs that they heard from the people. Originally at a center called The Place, on the bottom floor of a church, they received money, clothing, and food from the people in the area and distributed them to the people in need.

“We started out with the four of us and then engaged volunteer lay people,” Sister Kathryn explained. “We were soon able to pay them salaries.” Staff members on duty at the time of a request for assistance had discretion to give the person who came for help what they needed. “We expected everybody who ministered there to be guided by the Spirit,” she said. “Everyone on duty could make the decision if this person should get what they were asking for or if there was a better way to assist them.”

From the very beginning, staff members were also expected to be in tune with the people who came to them, to be able to read their needs beneath their requests. “If they asked for food, what’s the story behind that? Was her husband out of work? We saw patterns. From that, we developed the nine non-profits.”

She gave the example of Good Shepherd Place, an apartment building for low-income seniors and people with disabilities. “Elders were being given eviction notices after living in a little shack for years and years,” Sister Kathryn said. When the property values rose, the owners wanted to evict them so they could sell the property. “So we formed a non-profit corporation and built a senior apartment complex,” she said.

But the Sisters did not give the people material help for free. “They had to pay for what they got through service,” Sister Kathryn explained. “We paid people minimum wage credit for their work – sweeping the floor, mowing the lawn, raking leaves. With that credit, they could buy food or get a bill paid. They would take pride in how good the lawn looked or how shiny the windows were. Our desire was to give them self-esteem along with other necessities.”

In helping to meet the needs of the people, Sister Kathryn also realized the existence of poverty laws. She began to consult Georgia Legal Services about specific family situations and was invited to meet with the legal services staff members to discuss the laws. Through Georgia Legal Services, “I took paralegal training so I could prepare the cases,” she said. The office “could take many more cases than before because I did the footwork.”

As a paralegal, she advocated for the county residents who applied for food stamps, social security benefits, and other benefits. Ultimately, she turned the hearts of government employees who worked in social service agencies. Often, the government employees were overworked, but some had also carried the attitude that some poor people were “deserving” of benefits and others were “undeserving.” The government employees began working with Sister Kathryn on individual cases, granting the families food stamps and sending them in Sister Kathryn’s direction to receive clothes or other necessities.

“You have to have an open heart,” Sister Kathryn said. “What helped me was I really believed then and do now that people are doing the best they can. Sometimes we can help them to see that there’s a better way.” She added that her experience in Forsyth County “has taught me to stand in another’s shoes – to really feel their experience.”

She has also learned from the people of Forsyth County. “Many, many people who are economically poor have a deep faith in God,” Sister Kathryn said. “This faith is sometimes very differently expressed than my Catholic faith, but it is deep and non-shaking. I learned a lot from their manifestation of faith.”

Sister Kathryn has also learned to have faith in the people she served. “We were building resilient communities before we knew what they were,” she said. “Every community has problems. The solutions lie within the community. Our gift to them was to gather people together and facilitate community efforts.”  

Sister Kathryn noted the importance of nonprofits as “one of the poverty worker’s greatest tools, for they cause the community to take ownership of the project from the beginning and for the long haul.”

Sister Kathryn said the people of Forsyth County took on the responsibilities of staffing the nonprofit organizations and serving on their boards. “The community more than lived up to its obligations,” she said.

She gave the example of a clinic that the Sisters helped to start. “Every time I’d visit the clinic, it was filled with people,” Sister Kathryn said. What began simply “now has a pharmacy, a lab, obstetrics, pediatrics, as well as general medicine, and at least 10 doctors and nurse practitioners. We had nothing to do with that. The people who sat on the board did. We were there simply to bring people together.”

Through their work in Forsyth, Georgia, “we gained trust that the Spirit would guide us and that we would be safe, that whatever needed to be done, we could figure out how to do it,” Sister Kathryn said.


 

 

Recent Posts

Read More »