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February 6, 2023, Adrian, Michigan – For Sister Carleen Maly, OP, education and the Adrian Dominican Sisters go hand-in-hand – from being taught by them as an eighth-grader to her past 15 years of ministry as Director of Adrian Rea Literacy Center, located at the Motherhouse.
A native of Detroit, Sister Carleen moved with her family to nearby Clawson, Michigan, when she was going into the eighth grade. “I thought my life had ended,” she said, “but the move to Clawson was one of the most wonderful things that could have happened in my life because that was the first and only time I had Adrian Dominican Sisters [as teachers].” She was struck by the joy of the Sisters and by their obvious love of teaching.
During her high school years, Sister Carleen never forgot the Adrian Dominican Sisters at Guardian Angels School. She frequently stopped in to visit, especially to see Sister Patricia Marie O’Rourke, Principal.
Her thoughts again turned to the Adrian Dominican Sisters during a retreat in her senior year of high school. “It was during that weekend that I had time for prayer and talks about our life choices,” Sister Carleen recalled. “I really felt a strong urge in that time of prayer to follow through with talking with one of our Sisters about entering the Congregation.” After frequent talks with Sister Patricia Marie, she entered the Adrian Dominican Congregation in September 1959 with two classmates from eighth grade: Kathleen Voss, OP, and the late Gail Singel, OP.
Much to her surprise, Sister Carleen had an early experience of teaching when, in December of her postulant year, she was assigned to teach a fifth- and sixth-grade class at Sacred Heart School in Caro, Michigan, for the second semester. With the help of the other Sisters at the school, Sister Carleen made it through the semester. She learned from this and later experiences that teaching junior high school student was a “good fit” for her.
After profession, Sister Carleen taught at schools in Michigan and in the Dominican Republic. She later returned to the Dominican Republic with four other Sisters to start Centro Educacional de Bonao in the remote area of Bonao. The school was founded by a Canadian mining company to teach the children of the company’s workers. “We had people from 15 countries represented in the school,” with a complete Spanish track and a complete English track, she recalled.
From there, Sister Carleen went on to serve in pastoral ministry at two parishes in the Diocese of Orlando, Florida, and, in 1994, was elected to a six-year term as Chapter Prioress (Provincial) of the Florida Mission Chapter. Returning to Michigan to be closer to her mother, Sister Carleen worked with Sister Marie Damian Schoenlein, OP, Director of the Dominican Literacy Center in Detroit. After serving as Director of Vocation Outreach for three years, Sister Carleen was asked by Sister Marie Damian to help her start the Adrian Rea Literacy Center. Sister Marie Damian served as Director for one year and turned the ministry over to Sister Carleen.
As Director of Adrian Rea, Sister Carleen finds joy daily. “The joys are knowing that we are able to change people’s lives because we give them the gift of being able to read and write and speak in English,” she said. “In the course of our 15 years, we have tutored close to 1,500 learners with 1,200 tutors – all individualized tutoring,” Sister Carleen said. Currently, about 72 pairings come to Adrian Rea each week. About 90 percent of the learners are studying English as a second language.
Sister Carleen and the literacy center’s volunteer tutors work with many people who are at the lowest literacy rate. “They may have had some education in their country of origin,” she said. “A handful would have gone on to high school or college, but many reported that their highest was third grade in their country of origin.”
Sister Carleen also finds her own joy when seeing the tutors’ joy as they help their learners to meet personal goals: communicating with their children’s teachers and doctors, helping their children with homework, and finding a better job.
She feels especially blessed when the adult learners become citizens with the help of their tutors – and often with the help of the Congregation’s Immigration Assistance Office, directed by Sister Attracta Kelly, OP, an immigration attorney.
“Our Congregation has committed to helping people through an onsite place where they can seek a consultation and information about their immigration status to see if there is an opportunity to apply for citizenship,” Sister Carleen explained. “What we do in partnership is ask that the tutors help the learners study the 100 questions involved in the citizenship test.”
Whatever the learners’ goals might be, Sister Carleen has committed to providing a safe place and a “welcoming environment” in which they can work toward those goals. “It’s difficult enough for adults who are embarrassed, especially for people whose first language is English,” she said. “We welcome everyone and I would say that that’s the atmosphere. It’s a relaxed atmosphere but a place of business, a place of learning.”
January 23, 2018, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – In the past year, School Sisters of St. Francis and Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi (Lake Franciscans) have been fired up for justice and peace advocacy in such areas as human trafficking, immigration reform, and peace. Encouraging them in their advocacy, is Adrian Dominican Sister Durstyne Farnan, OP.
In June 2016, Sister Durstyne moved to Milwaukee as the justice coordinator for the School Sisters. Since then, she has taken on service one day per week as consultant and animator for the justice work of the Lake Franciscans. Sister Durstyne convenes the quarterly justice committees for both communities, works with the sub-committees, helps the Sisters to establish annual goals and objectives, and helps to organize the various justice and peace actions and presentations of the two Franciscan communities.
Some of the peace and justice activities coordinated by Sister Durstyne in the past year-and-a-half have included:
Sister Durstyne said she enjoys working with the Sisters, and is thrilled by their responses to justice and peace work. “Getting people to make a difference is really so empowering for them,” she said. “For most of them, this is the first time they’ve ever done anything like this.” The Sisters, who are now retired, hadn’t participated in advocacy work, often because of the hectic schedule of their full-time ministries.
Sister Durstyne sees her role as facilitating the Sisters’ desire to remain active and engaged in justice and peace work – supplying them with the information and resources they need. “Once they get the directions, they can go forward,” she said. “My role is to facilitate and animate people. I help get a lot of background [information] for them, but they make the decisions.”
Both congregations have made a difference in Milwaukee for well over a century, Sister Durstyne noted.
Part of her ministry has involved learning about the issues that Milwaukee faces. Although Milwaukee faces the same issues as the people of Adrian, Michigan, “in Milwaukee, the issues are compounded by size,” she explained. Along with racism, poverty, and immigration reform, the people of Milwaukee face the need for transportation for people who strive to get out of poverty by finding high-paying jobs – which are often an hour’s drive away from Milwaukee; the high re-incarceration rate of former prisoners; and human trafficking, which is prevalent in Milwaukee.
A clinical social worker by training, Sister Durstyne advocated for adults with severe mental illness and then served for six years in Ghana and Kenya, Africa. When she returned to the United States in 1996, the General Council was seeking a new justice and peace coordinator for the Adrian Dominican Congregation. “It was a position I had to grow into because I didn’t have a lot of experience with multiple issues,” Sister Durstyne said. In this new ministry, she said, she has gained a global perspective and has become involved with Dominican Friars and Sisters worldwide through her work as a North American Justice Promoter for the Dominicans.
Although she is frequently challenged by the difficulty that constituents sometimes face in contacting their legislators, Sister Durstyne enjoys working with the Sisters in the Franciscan communities as they advocate for justice. “My role is to help facilitate their desire to stay involved,” she said. “It makes me happy when I see them getting involved.”
September 28, 2016, Homestead, Florida – In her ministry as a nurse practitioner, Sister Patricia Erickson, OP, offers health care and compassion to children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who have crossed the Mexico-U.S. border on their own to find a home in the United States.
Sister Pat ministers at a specially designated facility at the Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida where up to 1,500 unaccompanied children can be housed for 35 days.
“The idea is to bring them to this facility and then place them with a sponsor eventually so they can stay in the States,” Sister Pat explained. During the child’s stay, the government checks his or her sponsors in the United States – usually a family member – to make sure that the home is safe and appropriate for the child. “Once they’re placed with their sponsor, their legal status is addressed.”
In her role as a nurse practitioner, Sister Pat works with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. She fulfills one of two roles, depending on her daily assignment.
On some days, she works with children who have just come to the site. During that time, she determines whether they need immediate medical care or if they have any skin diseases. They also receive nine vaccinations “so that they’re up to speed with the rest of the children with whom they’re going to go to school eventually in the States.” She also gets their medical history, their family’s medical history and tests them for communicable diseases.
Sister Pat can also be assigned to work in the “daily living site” of the facility, offering primary care to children who request it for chronic diseases, sports injuries, or other conditions. The children are “very well cared for,” she explained. “They go to school. They have sports, all the clothes they need – just about anything you can imagine.”
Because the facility is a transitional shelter, the number of children who reside there fluctuates at any given time. As some children come to the facility, others are released to their new homes with their sponsors. As of this writing, more than1,000 children live in the facility.
Sister Pat said that many circumstances can lead to children traveling unaccompanied to the United States. For example, she said, the parents might have come to the United States to work and raise money for the family and are now sending for their child, who may have been left at home with other relatives. In other cases, the child might have other relatives in the United States, and the parent might send him or her to the United States, where they feel their child will have a better life.
Children often face danger and hardship during what could be a six-month journey from their native country to the border. She spoke of one girl who, after losing her shoes, continued to walk in spite of splinters in her foot, which became infected. Many ride on top of freight trains – known as la bestia – from Central America to the Mexican-U.S. border, risking severe injury or death.
Other children come to the border with the help of “coyotes” – people who smuggle others across the border. In many cases, the “coyotes” exploit the children – sometimes taking them part way and then leaving them or selling them into human trafficking. The danger can be so extreme, Sister Pat said, that she has heard of some young girls who take birth control pills to prevent pregnancy in case they are raped.
In addition to providing health care, Sister Pat explained that her ministry involves being of whatever service she can be to children who have faced such a long and perilous journey. One of her biggest challenges is the regulation that prohibits her from touching or hugging the children – at a time when many of them need the reassurance of the human touch – and that prohibits her from asking questions about the circumstances that led them to the facility. When children want to talk, she said, she refers them to their case worker.
Still, Sister Pat can give the children emotional support when they go through difficult times. She recalled one boy who refused to get out of bed and was sent to the infirmary. She discovered from his file that he had witnessed his brother’s murder and was depressed.
“We kept him in the infirmary, not for any physical reason, but so that he could get more attention,” Sister Pat said. “At the meals I would go sit on the bed and just talk to him and encourage him to eat, and I would ask him about sports and school [at the facility]. Eventually, after 24 hours, he was feeling better and he went back to the dorm with the other boys.”
Sister Pat sees her ministry as a two-way street. She has been deeply touched and has learned from the children’s resilience in the face of hardship.
“I learn from them, just by their demeanor, their attitude, how they act,” she said. “They smile. They’re happy. And I don’t know how they do that, under the circumstances.”
Sister Pat learned about the position from a brief announcement on television, and felt drawn to apply. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to have this kind of experience with children who had been on a journey like this,” she said. “I will never understand what it was like for them, but in some way, just to be with them, that’s a gift to me.”
While her ministry is gratifying, Sister Pat said she can’t help but being concerned about the “other” children who are not given the same “special status” as those she works with — those in Central America, Nicaragua, Belize, and Mexico. She wonders what happens to them when they cross the border alone.
“I have thought and prayed long and hard about putting this information in writing,” she said. “But when I talk about this, I realize that people do now know about this project, which is totally sponsored and funded by the federal government. It is a wonderful opportunity for these children – they are safe and especially cared for. But what about the ‘others?’”
Reflecting on an article by Ilia Delio in Global Sisters-National Catholic Reporter of August 16, 2016, “Is religious life attentive to Jesus?” Sister Pat reflects on the quote, “…to live in a radical commitment to the Spirit is to live in the anxiety of now…one who lives on the edge of uncomfortable, the uncertain…” Sister Pat said, “This speaks to me not only of our commitment to justice but also of the example of the children on their journey.”