Catholic nun, lawyer, leader: vocation journey of Sister Sharlet Wagner

Sister Maxine  
This podcast is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry. I'm Sister Maxine, and my guest is Sister Sharlet Wagner, Executive Director of the Newcomer Network at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Newcomer Network provides immigration legal services to people and connects them with other necessary services, such as food, housing, and health care. Prior to the Newcomer Network, she served on the general leadership team of her congregation, the Sisters of the Holy Cross. She also served in the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Welcome, Sister Sharlet, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Sister Sharlet   
Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be with you.

Sister Maxine  
You're the executive director of the Newcomer Network, and you're an immigration lawyer. Before we talk about that organization and your work, let's talk about the journey that led you to this point. I understand in your early life, your family moved around a lot. You lived in a lot of different places.

Sister Sharlet   
We did. We moved around. My dad was a geologist and just moved around as he took on different jobs in the company and lived in many states in the United States. I was born in Nebraska. We lived in Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Maine. Lived in South Africa. So moved around quite a bit before I joined the congregation

Sister Maxine  
With so much travel, where in the world did you meet the congregation?

Sister Sharlet   
Well, I met the congregation when I was in college, I went to the University of Texas at Austin. And I would say during my college years, I had a fairly typical time of questioning, rejecting my faith, then gradually coming back to it and making my faith my own. And I became active in the Catholic Student Center there at UT. And toward the end of my time at the university, I started thinking seriously about religious life. The question just kind of came to me one day, but I had so little experience of religious and I really didn't have a clue where to start looking. I didn't want to tell anyone I was thinking of becoming a nun because that was just a little too weird. So I looked for Catholic newspapers in the university library. I thought maybe I'd find some information there. But that was a dead end. So I was really at a loss. Then, as luck would have it, or maybe Providence would have it, a woman religious came to the Catholic Student Center ministry team, and she was a Sister of the Holy Cross. She put out some vocations literature and I would kind of surreptitiously take a brochure if I thought nobody was looking. And then I finally worked up the courage to talk to her and to tell her that I was interested in religious life. And she was very supportive. She listened, she asked questions, she invited me to the convent for meals. She gave me vocations information about a whole variety of congregations and really supported me in my questioning and discerning. And so, you know, as I looked into religious life and read the literature, a lot of congregations actually started sounding the same to me. I didn't have the experience to differentiate. I didn't understand what was meant by charism. I think I decided to join Holy Cross for a few reasons. I liked the sisters I had met, I felt at home and comfortable with them. And I was attracted to the fact that it was international and to the family spirit of the congregation. So it was it was Providence acting, I believe.

Sister Maxine  
You listened to your heart, and you followed up. There's persistence in there.

Sister Sharlet   
Exactly. You know, at the time, and I thought it was I thought "call" was the right word for it because it was just a persistent call. It was my heart telling me there's something here, there's something I need to follow. I remember having a conversation with this sister, and we went for a walk, and I was saying, "But how do I know? I want to know that this is right for me, that I'm called to religious life." And she said, "Well, it's like going swimming"--which appealed to me because I loved to swim. She said, "You know, you can look at the pool, you can walk around it, you can dip your toe in the water. Eventually you have to dive in or walk away, and you can't know until you dive in." And something about that analogy struck me, and I knew I wanted to dive in and try it.

Sister Maxine  
I think many of us, as we were discerning, prayed for some clear message like the writing on the wall.

Sister Sharlet   
Right. [laughter]

Sister Maxine  
So after you entered the Sisters of the Holy Cross, you discerned a call to ministry as an immigration lawyer. Might not be the first thought that people have, that sisters would be immigration lawyers. How did you sense a call in that particular direction? And what experiences or ideas were speaking to your heart?

Sister Sharlet   
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, the beginning of that, I would say it was a class I took when I was a candidate in initial formation in the congregation. And it was a college course on Catholic Social Teaching. And that course really engaged my mind and my spirit. And I found myself wanting to use the brain that God gave me in a way that would promote justice and make a difference in people's lives. And I felt attracted to law because I felt like the law would allow me to do just that. So the initial attraction was to law, not necessarily to immigration law. And it was during law school, really, that I decided to focus my efforts on immigration law. I was attracted to that area of the law in part just because I enjoy working with diverse peoples. I find it energizing. I really wanted to work with people from around the globe. But the primary draw for me was more, I would say spiritual, more religious. It was rooted in my belief that as Christians and as religious, we belong on the margins, and as a Sister of the Holy Cross, we tend to go where the need is. I felt that immigrants are the most marginalized and most voiceless segment of our society, and that's where I saw the need and so that's where I wanted to go.

Sister Maxine  
To hear full episodes of A Nun's Life podcasts, visit the podcast page at anunslife.org/podcasts.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.