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October 23, 2024, Houston, Texas – Sister Maureen O’Connell, OP, Director of the Secretariat for Social Concerns for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas, took an unconventional path to her vocation as an Adrian Dominican Sister. Born into a tight-knit Irish Catholic family in Chicago, she was the niece of Sister Mary Frances Coleman, OP, an Adrian Dominican Sister.
Sister Maureen was educated by Sisters: the Adrian Dominican Sisters in first and second grades, the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters for the rest of her elementary school years, and the School Sisters of Notre Dame in high school. “I was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be a nun because everybody thought I was going to be a nun,” she said. “I think that’s why it took me a while.”
After her freshman year in college, Sister Maureen entered the Sinsinawa Dominican Congregation but stayed only for a few months. “I felt I was clear I didn’t have a vocation,” she said.
Sister Maureen attended Chicago Teachers College and finished her bachelor’s degree in education at DePaul University in Chicago. She also holds a Master’s of Social Work from the University of Houston.
She taught with Adrian Dominican Sisters for three years at Infant of Prague School in Flossmoor, Illinois. Among her teaching colleagues was a high school friend whose aunt was the first woman police officer in Chicago. When her friend Donna heard about the entrance exam for the Police Academy, she talked Sister Maureen into taking the test with her. “It was truly a lark,” Sister Maureen recalled. “There was no one in my family who was in the police. I took the exam and I was pretty high on the list – fifth.”
She attended the Police Academy in June and, after graduation, was first assigned to the youth division to work with women and children. “It was a different spin on being a teacher,” she said. Later she was assigned to serve as a detective in the vice division. She served as a police officer from 1966 to 1977.
“There’s a sense of camaraderie in the police department,” Sister Maureen said. “I was 26 and adventurous for sure.” Being a Chicago police officer offered opportunities for exciting work, including undercover operations and serving on a security detail when First Lady Pat Nixon was in town.
While serving in the police department, Sister Maureen became friends with some of the Adrian Dominican Sisters teaching at Aquinas High School in Chicago. “That was the beginning for me in considering religious life,” she said.
She entered the Adrian Dominican Congregation in 1977, professed her first vows in 1980, and in 1982 moved to Houston, where she has since ministered in a variety of ways. After serving as a counselor, Sister Maureen founded Angela House, a residential program to help formerly incarcerated women prepare for healthy and independent lives in the greater community.
“It’s amazing to see the resilience” of the women who came to Angela House, Sister Maureen said. She remembers being inspired “seeing what these women have to overcome even to get into the community after they’ve already paid their debt.” She continues to serve on the Board of Angela House.
Sister Maureen took on her current ministry as Director of the Secretariat for Social Concerns for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in 2020, overseeing the Justice and Peace Office and the archdiocese’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), which offers grants to local anti-poverty and social justice programs.
In 2022, the Office of Aging and Children’s Youth Services were added to her secretariat. “Our aging population is very vulnerable and the youth are also a very vulnerable population, so [they] fit into the area of social concerns.”
Sister Maureen’s responsibilities and activities are varied, including serving on the Cardinal’s Cabinet and on several boards in the archdiocese: St. Vincent de Paul Society; Catholic Charities; San José Clinic, a medical clinic that works with uninsured patients; and a shelter for women and children seeking asylum.
Her biggest challenge, she said, is “helping people to understand that Catholic social teaching is really the foundation of our faith and closely connected to the Gospel.” She works with parishes, priests, and lay people to help them understand Catholic social teachings. She also teaches them about Care for Creation. “Because this is such a big gas and oil community, people are often askance at care for creation,” she said. But an all-day event on the topic two years ago brought in about 120 people, she added. “It was a delight.”
Sister Maureen also relishes her work managing the CCHD grant process. She and a small group of people visit the organizations that have requested grants. She appreciates “seeing the people who don’t have the capacity to hire a grant writer and yet they’re the ones who are feet on the ground, serving people. It’s been a great privilege for me to work with them.”
Sister Maureen draws on her past experiences as a police officer and at Angela House in her current ministry. “I’m trying to make connections among other agencies and programs,” she said. “That’s what I did at Angela House. Who can we connect with that will help us further the mission?”
She was honored on October 24, 2024, by the Emmaus Spirituality Center at its Journey with Emmaus Gala.
Caption for above feature photo: Sister Maureen O’Connell, OP, cuts the ribbon for a new facility of Angela House, a residential program to help formerly incarcerated women successfully transition into healthy lives in the community.
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 Gross, OP, shortly after she began her 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 Gross, OP, with an assistant at Hope for 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 Gross, OP, with members of the spiritual direction team in Haina, Dominican Republic.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“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.