IGF057 In Good Faith with Sister Pat Crowley, Bethany House of Hospitality

Sister Rejane  
This is In Good Faith, a conversation about living faith in everyday life. I'm Sister Rejane of A Nun's Life Ministry. Our guest today is Sister Pat Crowley, a Benedictine Sister of St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, Illinois. Following in her parents' footsteps, Pat herself has a heart for social justice and the Benedictine rule. Living through the changes of Vatican II Pat found she has a gift for being an administrator, leading her into 42 years of meaningful ministry, especially in the realm of homelessness. During a sabbatical, Sister Pat focused on intercultural and spiritual aspects of homelessness by traveling abroad to learn directly from women. Working within administration for several nonprofits, including Deborah's Place, Pat has gained a broad knowledge of homelessness and housing. She has worked on extensive collaborations and formed an alliance in the development of Chicago's 10-year plan to end homelessness. Then Sister Pat's community elected her as prioress for her congregation for two terms. Upon finishing her terms as prioress, she worked again in homelessness. Sister Pat brought together a group of women religious leaders from many congregations to found Bethany House, a shelter for young women seeking asylum. During the same time, Pat was also working on becoming a spiritual director through a program of the Siena Retreat Center in Racine, Wisconsin. Once she finished this program, she traveled to Namibia, Africa to teach Benedictine Sisters. Today, Sister Pat continues to play a significant role in Bethany House, and is the current coordinator for the Together program of the Religious Formation Conference, located near Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Welcome, Sister Pat.

Sister, Pat, it's really nice to have you here today.

Sister Pat  
Oh, thank you. It's good to be here.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I like to start with a personal point of connection with my guests. And I know that you have a French Canadian grandfather that inspired you to take French in college. And you know, my mom is English Canadian. And I have a French Canadian name -- named after one of my mom's cousins, his wife. And then when my parents got married, my dad's first job took them to Montreal. So I actually lived on Ile de Soeurs, Nuns Island. Where was your grandfather from?

Sister Pat  
He was from Quebec, a little town just south of Quebec, that I have not been to, called Saint-Adrien-d'Irlande. So it's St. Adrian of Ireland.

Sister Rejane  
Okay.

Sister Pat  
Yeah. Which is a connection to the Crowley, I guess.

Sister Rejane  
Sure. Yeah, I did take French in high school. And I have not used it very much, I must confess, but I commend you on getting your degree in French.

Sister Pat  
Well, I had my minor, and then I added some on because I was asked to teach.

Sister Rejane  
That's right. Your first major was English, wasn't it?

Sister Pat  
That's right. That's right.

Sister Rejane  
Okay, gotcha. Well, I thought to start, you know, you've done so much ministry and it reflects such a strong call to social justice, from homelessness, immigration, spirituality, and learning about your people you serve from all over the world. Where do you think that began, that strong call in your life for social justice issues?

Sister Pat  
Oh, I think that came from my family, from my parents. They were actually part of the founding of the Christian Family Movement, which was an international movement. And the structure of that group was they would meet every two weeks and they would look at the gospel for a bit of the time, for an hour a meeting, and then they would look at a social action. So from the time they started doing that, they would take a small action, like inviting students from other countries to come and Thanksgiving dinner with us, for example. So that that's where it came from. They talked about it to us.

Sister Rejane  
And were you part of those gatherings? Or it was just adults?

Sister Pat  
Oh, no, that was just adults. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we would sit on the stairs up above -- if we were in another town -- and listen. But otherwise, it was just the adults.

Sister Rejane  
Sure. But your parents, sounds like, made a point to share with you some of the things that they were doing or include you in some of those actions-- is that correct?

Sister Pat  
Yeah, and then, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, and then into high school, they helped form a young Christian student group at our house. And so we followed the same methodology, when we were teenagers, really. My friends who I still connect with from that time -- they weren't in my high school, but they were my grammar school friends -- they still remember that, you know, and have a sense of social justice because of that. And then I joined YCS, the Young Christian Students, in high school, too.

Sister Rejane  
And did that club follow similar --

Sister Pat  
Yeah, it's a methodology that comes from Europe, from Belgium, actually, from the worker movement, and it's very popular now in different spheres: observe, judge and act. So look around you, see what's going on, then look at the gospel, and compare what's going on with what would happen in the Gospel -- what Jesus would do -- and then take an action in your own context.

Sister Rejane  
Do you remember an action that you took with the seventh and eighth grade or with the high school group?

Sister Pat  
Well, in seventh and eighth grade, it wasn't too social justice oriented except we said, "Oh, you know, if we're dating, we're not going to go and spend money. We'll do things like maybe take a drive through the city and observe what's going on." So that would be an action. That was very simple in the beginning, but other times it might be -- maybe the discussion was on hunger. And so we might go and volunteer at a soup kitchen.

Sister Rejane  
Okay. Okay.

Sister Pat  
Yeah. So it's that kind of thing.

Sister Rejane  
Sure. Sure. And then I'm sure there was a reflective piece afterwards, right?

Sister Pat  
Yeah, well, you had to come back to the group and report what you had done. S there was accountability, for sure. And then reflection on the gospel went along with that.

Sister Rejane  
Wow, that's wonderful that you started at such an early age. And that goes back to your parents. And you grew up in Chicagoland, right?

Sister Pat  
Yes. I grew up in the northern suburbs. I grew up in the 40s. And they were good parents, they thought they should raise their children in the suburbs. So they moved from the city when I was two years old. And we went to a suburb.

Sister Rejane  
Okay. And, from there, how did you feel called to religious life? Was that connected with this strong call to social justice?

Sister Pat  
Yes, it was. I went to school to the Benedictines. And it was it was an experience of doing social justice as a teenager. But I think what attracted me was both the sung office -- because at that time, they were chanting the office in Latin, and we would sneak into the back of church and listen -- and then the women in that community were very real, very human, in my experience in high school. And I think that's what attracted me. I resisted that call for a bit. I went away to college for a year. But then I decided to come back and enter. And those were the two reasons. Ad also our house was very active, as you can imagine, at home. And I think the contemplative nature of the Benedictines appealed to me. You know, I liked social action, but I also liked quiet and reflection time.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, I have several friends here -- I know Benedictines up and Atchison, Kansas, and in Clyde, Missouri, and I did a lot of initial formation with them as well as people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So, we kind of joke around that some of my spirituality is definitely Benedictine. And I often go to Benedictine retreat centers for my retreats. But my friend, Sister Maria Victoria says, "Yeah, you do great, but I don't think you could handle the routine." [laughter] She's more in a contemplative order. So you know, getting up at a much earlier hour. And we kind of joke about that, since I love to sleep a bit more. But I do love the rhythm of the life. And the prayer, especially the call and response with the psalms.

Sister Pat  
Yeah, me too.

Sister Rejane  
Beautiful. Just beautiful. So, how did your parents respond when you said "Yes, I want to enter with the Benedictines of Chicago"?

Sister Pat  
Well, their initial response was wait a couple of years and finish college and then go. But I said no, you know, I wanted to go. They were fine with it. But they were Benedictine Oblates. That's why I went to school to the Benedictines, they had become Oblates at some point with St. John's Abbey and Collegeville. My father loved to tell us about the Rule. He'd like to pretend he was the abbot. [laughter] And he liked the humor in the Rule, and he liked just the idea of consulting everybody about decisions, you know. And so, they were very happy that if I were going to enter, I were going to enter a Benedictine community, because they knew that spirit.

Sister Rejane  
Wow. Do you remember any of the quotes that your father would often repeat?

Sister Pat  
Well, sure. I don't know if it's a quote, but the idea anyway. Yeah. Well, the funny one was, you know, Benedict says that, you know, monks could have wine to drink. Of course, they were in Italy, and that a hemina of wine was enough for any monk. And my father loved that. He said, "But nobody knows" -- but they do now, but nobody knew at that time, I guess, or he didn't know, what a hemina was. And so, you know, you could drink as much as you think you can handle. You know, he thought that was good. He liked that. And as I said, he liked -- one of the chapters in the rule is about bringing the monks to chapter, to Council, and he liked that. So we had a round table, kind of oval table. And we were a lot because they took foster children, we had foreign students, and their own kids. And so he would ask, if they were going to make a decision, like about maybe going on a trip to visit other CFM groups, he would ask around the table, "What do you think of that? Where else do you think we should go?" And everybody would contribute. So everybody felt important.

Sister Rejane  
That is special, that your input mattered.

Sister Pat  
Yeah, yeah, it did.

Sister Rejane  
Okay, so what is a hemina? How much is that?

Sister Pat  
You know, I forget! [laughter] I should look it up. I don't know what it was.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, I'll have to look it up afterwards. I've never heard that word. Oh my gosh.

Sister Pat  
That's funny.

Sister Rejane  
It is! So you entered before Vatican II, correct?

Sister Pat  
I did. Yes.

Sister Rejane  
Can you talk about what that was like in those years -- before Vatican II, and the changes you experienced?

Sister Pat  
Yeah. Yeah, a lot. I mean, my family was an interesting combination, my parents, of traditional practices, and way advanced social justice action. But like, daily Mass was a practice and, of course, that Latin Mass and the priests facing the altar, you know, that kind of thing. But, you know, they went every day. And we went sometimes with them, it depended. So that was one thing, just liturgically. And of course, after Vatican II, the native language or the indigenous language of the towns or countries was what was the language of the liturgy. Plus that brought in other kinds of music. It brought in also people participating and reading whereas before Vatican II, it was only the priest. And, you know, not anyone else giving communion or reading. There were male servers, but not, not female servers, of course. So liturgically that's briefly what changed. Now in the, in the monastery, we prayed very early -- we don't pray as early now; we don't, because we're a combination of contemplative and active. But we would get up at five and have matins, which is the longest hour of the Liturgy of the Hours. Originally, the Liturgy of the Hours had seven times that they prayed, they stopped and prayed each day. Because we were teachers, not everybody would be at everything, but we would pray matins and we would pray lauds, and we take prime and terce and sext all together.

Sister Rejane  
You combined them.

Sister Pat  
We'd take a little break in between. Some were before Mass, and some were other. You know, one of the things in the Rule of Benedict is that you need a break to take care of the things of nature. And so, we, we always followed that.

Sister Rejane  
Very practical. Very practical.

Sister Pat  
Yeah, he was very practical. And so, you know, the, the number of hours that were prayed -- hours means a period of the office. Now we pray more what we call morning prayer, which will be lauds, and a smaller group does midday prayer.

Sister Rejane  
Okay.

Sister Pat  
And then we pray, evening prayer, which is vespers. Okay, so it's really much smaller, and it's in English. Benedict talks about using only scripture and the Fathers of the Church. We do readings, we do a scripture, but we also do commentaries by women and men. On the feast of saints, we might do something special. Tomorrow is our Founders Day. And we'll do a reading from Sister Vivian, who's one of our sisters who's 109 this month, believe it or not.

Sister Rejane  
Wow!

Sister Pat  
And she had written this thing about the founders, this passage, so that's what will be read tomorrow at vespers.

Sister Rejane  
Oh, how beautiful. Happy feast tomorrow!

Sister Pat  
Yeah, yeah. We were founded in 1861. Yeah, so there were a lot of changes liturgically in the office and in Mass, as it was for the laity. But probably the more significant part of the changes of Vatican II were that the church was defined as the people of God. And so the people of God should take responsibility for the church. It wasn't just the hierarchy, the priests. And that has taken some time to take effect. I certainly recognize that the Christian Family Movement throughout the world prepared a lot of lay people for that. And sisters were prepared. You know, I was in the first class of sisters that were part of what was called Sisters' Formation. And the idea was that we would get educated, both theologically and professionally, for whatever we were going to do, specifically before we taught, because before that, sisters were sent out, you know, with maybe a high school education and some college courses, but really hadn't had professional preparation. So that was a change that affected us greatly. And then religious orders were told to go back to their roots. So the most noticeable change was in dress, because most communities, when they were founded, didn't have what was called a habit, but they took on the dress, very simple, of the times, and that was certainly true of Benedictines. So we did change, and we eventually, after a year or so, changed to lay clothes. And so that was part of it. And then another big change for us, as Benedictine women -- all of our ministry had been teaching until that, and at that time, we made the decision -- and again, it was a community decision -- that people should choose what ministry they felt called to. And, of course, with the approval of, you know, the person who was in leadership, what we call a prioress. And that also was a huge logistical challenge -- like, sometimes you couldn't be present for the office all the time. And Benedict knows that, because even in the fifth century, the monks worked in the fields. And he said, "If you can't come in from the field, at the office we'll say, 'For our absent brothers and sisters.'"

Sister Rejane  
Oh, so they are still included in the prayer.

Sister Pat  
They're there! So that continued. I guess the other thing was a consciousness of -- you know, the first quote of Gaudiem et Spes, which is one of the documents on the church is, you know, the joys and sorrows of the world, that the church needs to be in harmony with that. And that's a call to social justice. And I guess the last thing I would mention -- and there are other things! -- was a huge change. I guess the last thing would be the relation to other religions, and other Christians. So we began to study that. In our high school, when I was teaching, I taught world religions for a couple of years, and did some ecumenical work visits to other Christian churches, which was verboten before Vatican II. We thought we were the best and the only right, and we found out we aren't necessarily.

Sister Rejane  
Expanded our world view.

Sister Pat  
That's right. That's right. That's right.

Sister Rejane  
We are going to take a moment for a brief break. This is In Good Faith, a program of A Nun's Life Ministry. We want to thank our sponsors and individual donors like you, whose support makes the In Good Faith program possible. Please visit anunslife.org for more information, to make a donation, or to become a sponsor of the ministry. We will be right back.

Welcome back. I am Sister Rejane, of A Nun's Life Ministry, and my guest is Sister Patricia Crowley. You can find past episodes of In Good Faith and all our podcasts at anunslife.org and all the major platforms where you get your podcasts. So you started out in teaching, right? But how did how did that work for you personally, to move from teaching into some of the social service realm? What was that like?

Sister Pat  
Yeah, well, I never felt like teaching was my forte. You know, I loved the students and still have friends from among those years, but I just didn't feel like I was a natural in that. We did a lot of workshops together, led by people in community and some out, kind of imagining where we saw ourselves in five years, or 10 years. And I imagined myself working with people who were on the margin, who were poor. With the freshmen in high school, we did service, so we would take them to a soup kitchen, and be with them, and I discovered that I really enjoyed that. And getting to know the people there -- eventually. At first, I was more comfortable serving the soup, but I got comfortable. And so that's how I imagined myself. I was called to leadership in the community, I was sub-prioress, is what we call it, the second person, for two years. And then I knew that was going to be over because we had an election and another prioress, I presumed that wouldn't be the same. And so I applied for a job. And my only qualification was that I lived in the part of Chicago that they were hiring from, because it was a community center.

Sister Rejane  
Okay.

Sister Pat  
But I didn't have any experience. So they took a risk. And so it was a niche for me. I knew the first day, this was where I was called to be.

Sister Rejane  
Wow, you even had that real feeling that this was your gifts and talents being used?

Sister Pat  
I did. Yeah. And not just being with the people, and getting to know them. But I discovered that I really liked administration.

Sister Rejane  
That's great.

Sister Pat  
I know! [laughter]

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, yeah. What, what part of the administration did you really feel real confident with?

Sister Pat  
I guess it was organizing people so they were happy in what they were doing. But I had to learn it, learn that you have to have good personnel policies in order to keep people happy with what they're doing. And what they're getting compensated and rewarded. And fundraising -- I don't like to do the ask, but I love to get the money. [laughter]

Sister Rejane  
Yes, yes, we do. [laughter]

Sister Pat  
And to be able then to create new programs with the money. And I love to see things grow. I'm not the best at maintaining something -- it has to change, it has to grow to meet the needs of whatever the population is.

Sister Rejane  
Sure. So you like that creativity that is so necessary, so important when you're starting an organization and growing it -- because the possibilities are out there. And yeah, it's exciting.

Sister Pat  
Yeah, it's risky. And it's exciting.

Sister Rejane  
So from the community center -- you were there, was it 10 years?

Sister Pat  
Yes.

Sister Rejane  
And then you took a sabbatical? Is that correct?

Sister Pat  
Yeah, we got so much attention, because we grew into daycare, health care, working with tenants, continuing the social services and education of immigrants, legal stuff -- we just grew a lot. And so we got an award: they would award the agency money for the executive director to take a year off and do whatever she or he wanted to do that might help Chicago. And they would pay the substitute for the year. And then that person would come back --and would pay all the expenses for whatever that project was. I mean, it was unbelievable. So my project was to study the way women who came to our neighborhood -- women in the countries of origin -- how they organize themselves for change. People came from Mexico, and Central America, some from Peru, and some from the Caribbean. So I ended up traveling in some of those countries and visiting women's organizations and just observing how women organize themselves, especially when they had very little material.

Sister Rejane  
What were some of the insights or one key insight from that, with how women organize?

Sister Pat  
Well, the most profound one to me was, I was in a refugee camp of Salvadorans during the Civil War, it was in Honduras. And the women -- there weren't very many men because the men were back in El Salvador, and they were, you know, fighting. And so there were older men, and then there were teenager boys. And the women organized around health and education and governance of the camp. But in the leadership teams, they always included men, even though there were a few of them. You know, they never just did it themselves. And that was the most profound for me. In other areas, that wasn't true. That was only in that one instance. I think that part of women organizing themselves was rooted in their relationships with each other. And their longing for some kind of conversation that was reflective. In some of the groups, it was the comunidades de base -- small group reflections on the gospel. That was true in Mexico. In some, it was women organizing themselves around various roles, like, teaching or whatever, but encouraging other women to take on roles. In Peru in the Pueblos Jovenes, it was women who observed the fact that there wasn't enough food and developed common kitchens where people could come and eat together, they shared what little they had and cooked bunches of things together so that it would go a longer way. And children would be able to eat, and adults too. So it was varied things.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah. And how did that experience help you when you came back? Because you moved on to Deborah's House, is that right?

Sister Pat  
Deborah's Place.

Sister Rejane  
Excuse me -- Deborah's Place.

Sister Pat  
Yeah. You know, when I came back, I wanted to use my Spanish, but my Spanish wasn't very good. So I couldn't qualify for a job that I thought would use my skills as well as my Spanish. And the person who took my place at Howard Area, she liked what she was doing. So I said, "Oh, keep doing it. I'll look for something else. That's fine." You know, I didn't want to replace her, because I thought it would be hard for her to go from being in charge to then working under me -- she had worked with me before she took that job. So it took me a while. So I didn't apply the things in terms of program development, I wouldn't say, but in terms of how I related to the women. Deborah's Place was founded -- actually, my mother was part of the founding.

Sister Rejane  
Oh, tell me about that!

Sister Pat  
Yeah, that was kind of interesting. Well she lived downtown, in the late 80s, and early 90s. Oh, late 80s. I guess. She and other women observed that there were women sleeping in doorways on Michigan Avenue. Somehow a group of women came together who were representing different churches in the area, and a synagogue, I think -- I'm not positive about that. So they came together and opened a shelter for those women. And those were women that were long term homeless -- had been on the streets, maybe for 20 or 30 years, is what that meant. Yeah, so she helped to found that, and then she volunteered at it in her 80s. She slept on a mat on the floor with them. Deborah's Place was already started when I came, and it had a very good approach to that phenomenon of long-term homelessness. And maybe the basic insight -- there probably were others -- was that we cannot be human beings fully without having choices. And when you're homeless, you don't have any choices. So they did lots of things like they would never say you can only stay here a certain amount of time. Later on HUD, for the federal government to give funding, put time limits on things, but they would never say that. And they would do little things, like if there was salad, they would put out a couple of dressings, so people could make a choice. That kind of thing. And they also integrated art and art therapy into the daytime program that they started. I came with the gift of loving your administration. My predecessor had been a marvelous program developer. Probably her gift wasn't administration particularly. It was more, you know, really developing and designing a program. And besides, she had just had twins, so boy, she needed to pay attention to that. So I took over in in 1991, I can't remember what month. And I began to well learn how they were operating, but also to think about, how do we get rid of homelessness? Because people shouldn't have to be on the streets for 30 years. And so we started to talk about housing. And we developed quite a bit of housing over my 13 years there.

Sister Rejane  
Well, and you actually built up alliances, didn't you with other --

Sister Pat  
Yeah, what we realized one day -- and this was women organizing this -- I really realized that the only time that different agencies who were providing shelters came together to talk to each other was when they were in a room with a government agency talking about what kind of money the government could give. And so they were in competition. And I thought, that doesn't make sense. We need to work together. So we founded a thing called the Partnership to End Homelessness. And it got people talking to each other, realizing their common issues. And if we speak those together, we'll have much more impact. It wasn't easy! There were four women, two were African American, and one was a young mother who was running an agency. And when we started Partnership to End Homelessness, her youngest child had just been born. And then there was me. I was a little older. And we did that, and out of that grew what's now called the All Chicago -- it's organization around homelessness. That's a long story.

Sister Rejane  
Wow. So you really have a gift of bringing people together?

Sister Pat  
Yeah.

Sister Rejane  
Building that collaboration?

Sister Pat  
Yeah. Agencies need to trust people, to trust each other. And I was a little bit older than the others. I left Deborah's Place in 2004. Because my mother was not well, but then she got a little better. And so I was invited to run what's called the Continuum of Care, and partly because they needed somebody who they trusted to work together. And so I did that for two years, and then it was folded into something else.

Sister Rejane  
What is what is Continuum of Care? What was that?

Sister Pat  
Well, it's the term that HUD uses for the collaboration of government, private, business, around homelessness, for funding. So in order to get funding from HUD, you have to have a collaboration.

Sister Rejane  
Got it!

Sister Pat  
Yeah. That's a simple answer.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah. I mean, you spent so many years-- you know those ins and outs.

Sister Pat  
Yeah, I do, although I've been out of it for a while.

Sister Rejane  
Sure. We are going to take a quick break. Thank you to all our donors and sponsors who support A Nun's Life Ministry and our In Good Faith podcasts. If you have any questions or comments about this podcast, please leave us a message at 913-214-6087 Again, 913-214-6807. We would love to hear from you, our listeners. We will be right back.

Hello, listeners, we are back. Remember to fill out our listener online survey that can be found in the show notes. Your feedback is important to us. Let's finish our conversation with Sister Patricia Crowley. So from the Continuum of Care you went into leadership?

Sister Pat  
Yes, I did. I was elected to be prioress. I had kind of pulled my name out for years because I was doing all this other stuff. But yes, in April of 2007, I was elected prioress, and was in that in that position for eight years.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah. How did was that? I mean, that's such a different role. I mean, working with your sisters that you've known your whole life.

Sister Pat  
It was quite an adjustment, because I was used to moving around the city a lot. And, you know, eventually I moved around the world in that position, but at first it was very much here, you know, and so it was an adjustment, but it was okay. I did what I could do.

Sister Rejane  
Right. Right. And was your mom's still with you at this point?

Sister Pat  
No, no, she died in 2005.

Sister Rejane  
Okay, okay. Yeah, I was wondering if she was still alive when you were in leadership, but she was with you in spirit.

Sister Pat  
Indeed. Indeed.

Sister Rejane  
So from your time in leadership, you decided you wanted to pursue working in spirituality. Right? You went up to the Racine Dominicans' Siena Center.

Sister Pat  
I did, after I was finished.

Sister Rejane  
When you were finished with leadership. Yeah, I'm very familiar with that. I was in Racine, Wisconsin, and worked for the Racine American Eco Justice Center. I was executive director -- it started in 2005. So I don't know if you ever got over to see that.

Sister Pat  
I did not. I heard about it. But I never did.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, it was wonderful. Good community. And I'm sure that program was very good.

Sister Pat  
It was good. And it was a good transition for me too, because it's a two-year program, meets once a month, most months. It was just good.

Sister Rejane  
And from there, what were you doing?

Sister Pat  
Well, during that time, I got invited to consider going to Africa to do spiritual direction with young Benedictine women. I wanted to finish the program, so it got delayed a little bit. But I went in August of 2019. And spent a year there in Namibia, which is Southwest Africa, on the Atlantic. And so I did that. And then I came back. In 2017 -- I wasn't enrolled in the spiritual direction program yet -- I was looking for some way to volunteer. A friend of mine is a Viatorian Brother. And he had founded a home called Viator House for young men who were seeking asylum and had turned 18, come out of the children's centers that the government ran for them. And then when they were 18, they had no place to go. If they had no place to go, they would go to Viator House. So I did volunteer there and one day another volunteer asked Michael, "Well, what about the young woman?" And I said to Michael, "You know, I could help figure that out." Right. So, so I called a meeting of the people who I'd been in leadership with in Illinois, through LCWR, the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, and 20 people came. And so Michael talked and also the Young Center, which does advocacy for young asylum seekers who are under 18. And from there, we founded Bethany House, of Hospitality for young women seeking asylum. We opened in October of 2017. So I was doing that already. But then there's a board of other sisters. It's a collaboration among different religious orders that did that. And so, I left in 2019, and they ran it for a year without me, which was great. I was in Africa, and then I came back, and they wanted me to take over again as president of the board. So I did. So I do that. I'm involved in a couple of ministries right now. We have a wonderful executive director who is a Springfield Dominican. And so I don't have to do the administration part of Bethany House anymore. I did for the first two years. And so I was freed up to do things. I had been part of the Ignatian Spirituality Project, which does retreats for women who are homeless. So I'm on a women's team. You know, it's not a huge commitment. But it's a weekend retreat, and maybe two-day retreats during the year that I work on the team with. And then I'm involved now -- the Religious Formation Conference has a program at the Catholic Theological Union, CTU, for young religious, mainly in temporary vows, but also one this year who has been in perpetual vows for, I think, three years. And it's called the Together program. So a friend of mine, runs the Religious Formation Conference. And so she asked me to consider doing a part time job with them. So I am doing that. I just started it this month. So I'll be working with young women religious.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, that is so exciting. I know a lot of them that lived in the house this past year, and I think are continuing. And I'll give a shout out to the Together program. It's been wonderful for me to follow some of them on Facebook and different venues. I'm not going to name names, because I'll forget somebody. But it just sounds wonderful.

Sister Pat  
It's great for them. And what they tell me so far is that the best part of it is living in community. They're all together. They're all from different religious congregations. But they're all studying theology. And they all agree to reserving Thursday evening for some kind of ongoing formation. So that's what they do. So I'm looking forward to being with them. And, you know, my master's work is in theology. So, you know, I really appreciate that. That really helps us as Catholics, as Christians, but as women religious, to deepen our spirituality.

Sister Rejane  
Well, and with your theology, and then the spiritual direction, and then having time abroad. So you have a concept of how interculturality has to work.

Sister Pat  
Right.

Sister Rejane  
I know there's several women from other countries in the Together program.

Sister Pat  
That's right, your one from Botswana. And one is from Korea. And one is Korean American.

Sister Rejane  
Right, yeah. Right. Well, and I'm sure also at Bethany House of hospitality, right. If you're working with women who are immigrants, you've got to understand some of the cultural practices and find out what's important. What are the values?

Sister Pat  
Yeah. And right now we have women from Sierra Leone, Congo, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Sister Rejane  
Wow.

Sister Pat  
So we've had from 17 different countries over the five years of existence.

Sister Rejane  
And in Bethany house, do they build community amongst themselves?

Sister Pat  
They do. Sometimes it's really hard, because of language. But among the Spanish speaking and the two Africans that are there now, there's a tremendous community spirit. Two of the young women who have been there more than a year are kind of the ones who help to build community. The staff certainly does too. But the women themselves do.

Sister Rejane  
They're able to kind of take what they've learned in their time there and their lived experience and recognize that when a new person comes in, make sure they're included -- that inclusion piece.

Sister Pat  
Right. Right.

Sister Rejane  
Gosh. Can you share a story about one of the young women who's lived at Bethany house?

Sister Pat  
Oh, sure. There's some very dramatic stories. I'll tell you two of them. One of them -- let's call her Elizabeth. She came from Africa to Brazil, with her father, mother, and a younger sibling, I think a brother. They were having a difficult time in Brazil. And so the father decided that the father and Elizabeth would go to the border of the United States. And then they would find someplace to be and live and bring the mother and the younger child there. Well, the father and Elizabeth set out through the Darien Gap, which is the connection between Colombia and Panama, and jungle, dangerous, and I presume with a coyote, I don't know that.

Sister Rejane  
For our audience, coyote is someone who is like the leader or the guide.

Sister Pat  
Correct. And paid big money.

Sister Rejane  
Yes. To bring them from their country of origin to the US.

Sister Pat  
And not always, not always honest. Yeah, but so anyway, to make a long story short, they were crossing a river and the father, Elizabeth's father died. Drowned. So she's, at the time 16 years old. And so she proceeds with the group, and comes to a children's center. And when she's 18, she's released to Bethany House. And she's doing well now. But the problem is that the Red Cross cannot locate her mother and her younger sibling, so she has no contact with them. She doesn't really know where they are. And she's from Central Africa. One of the sisters, who's from Uganda, somehow has a house where she rents rooms to immigrants. So Elizabeth moved out of Bethany House eventually. She graduated from high school, got her high school diploma when she was at Bethany House. And then she moved with Stella. And so she's doing well. She's working. She has a work permit. So that's one story. Just to demonstrate the trauma. The other story I'll share with you -- there's so many that come to mind. But there were four sisters from, let's say, a southern Asian country. And their father had trafficked the oldest one to help a gambling problem. The mother had left the family. And so the oldest one, and I don't know how old she was, escaped. And she came back and took her younger sisters across the country to a grandmother's house. And the grandmother apparently must have had a little money. And she decided that they should come to the United States. The mother's had Canada, remarried, I don't know that whole story. Anyway, the four sisters arrived on March 20 at the border. They had come through Brazil and up, walking through countries. And of course, that was when COVID shut everybody down in 2020. And so they were separated. The oldest two were put in a for-profit prison for immigrants. The youngest one was put in a children's center, run by the government, and then the18-year-old was released to us somehow, miraculously. So to make a long story short, they were all reunited through Bethany House.

Sister Rejane  
Wow.

Sister Pat  
There are many more details to that. And now they are living in a four-bedroom apartment on the northwest side of Chicago, living together and working. And the two older ones just got asylum.

Sister Rejane  
Oh, great.

Sister Pat  
The two younger ones are still waiting. Yeah. So that's kind of an amazing phenomenon.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, the stories and the journeys and like you said, the trauma and hardships and yet there's resiliency, and through working with Bethany House, some success. And you're celebrating your five-year anniversary in October for Bethany House. Congratulations!

Sister Pat  
We have a lot of supporters, but our primary supporters are religious women, religious congregations.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah, well, we'll make sure to put the website for Bethany house in the show notes, so people can come and see what it is.

Sister Pat  
That would be great. Yeah, that would be great.

Sister Rejane  
Well, Sister, Pat, I'm so grateful that we could spend this time together and you could share. You've done so much and so much around women and relationships and getting things done. There's a wonderful theme throughout your life story.

Sister Pat  
Thank you. It's a privilege. And, you know, I value our Benedictine lifestyle, that's enabled me to both feel rooted and be able to branch out.

Sister Rejane  
Well said. All right, well, thank you again -- this is A Nun's Life. In Good Faith is a production of A Nun's Life Ministry, helping people discover and grow in their vocation by engaging questions about God, faith and religious life. This program is made possible through the grace of God and the support of our sponsors of A Nun's Life Ministry, and you, our listeners. Don't forget to call us and leave a message. Tell us what you like, ask a question, or just say hi. Call 913-214-6087 and visit us at anunslife.org. God bless!

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.