What should someone never, ever build next door to a convent? A strip club, for one thing. But apparently someone missed that memo in suburban Chicago.
Not in our neighborhood
The Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo have a fight on their hands and they are not going quietly into the neon-lit night.
The sisters are not happy with the new strip club that moved in next to their convent in Melrose Park, Ill., home to about 20 women.
They couldn’t stop it from moving into the neighborhood last year. But now they are appealing to the Cook County Circuit Court to shut the place down, according to NBC 5 in Chicago.
And the sisters have more help for their effort now. This week, the Village Board of Melrose Park voted to join the sisters in suing Club Allure and the Village of Stone Park, which gave the club its operating license.
The club is so close to the convent that someone could reach across the back fence and nearly touch the club’s back wall, the TV reporter noted.
“This goes against our whole fiber, our well-being,” said Sr. Maria Noemia Silva. “We've been here more than 70 years. We're fighting for a safe, healthy environment here. And for the club to close.”
The sisters based part of their lawsuit on a state law that, with exceptions, prohibits businesses like strip clubs from operating within 1,000 feet of a place of worship.
"The business is legally constituted," said attorney Robert Itzkow. "It presents no real problems to anyone ... Everyone's welcome to file whatever lawsuits they want to file.”
Silva said that aside from legal objections, her colleagues have a problem with what the club stands for. The order runs a home for retired sisters on its grounds and “their chapel looks outside and the first thing you see is the strip club,” she said.
"Our sisters, it's their last years on earth. The sisters who come to do their gardening, they're afraid, because they don't know what they're going to find."
Not in our neighborhood, either
The Dominican Sisters of the Peace Martin de Porres Center in Columbus, Ohio, has become ground zero for dozens of neighbors and community leaders concerned about a new pawn shop in their neck of the woods.
The group has met twice to talk about the recent opening of the Buy Here Sell Here shop. Neighbors are concerned that gun sales will lead to more crime in the area; they’re especially worried about the safety of children and senior citizens in the neighborhood.
The Sisters of the Peace are standing with the neighbors in their effort to stop the store from selling firearms, reports ABC 6 Columbus.
Small but mighty
Sr. Mona Smiley, 79, the first Catholic leader in the Archdiocese of San Antonio to promote HIV/AIDS education and awareness, died on June 2.
A woman of small stature born in Ireland, she was frequently referred to as the “Mother Theresa of San Antonio.”
News4 San Antonio reported that Smiley – a member of the San Antonio-based Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word – is remembered as a compassionate leader who was long committed to helping people on the margins of society.
“She would stand up and speak to the congregations and talk about how we needed to respond as Our Lord Jesus Christ would respond to those who are sick and suffering,” said colleague Sr. Walter Maher.
A voice for peace
As a member of Maryknoll Sisters, the first U.S.-based congregation of women religious dedicated to world mission, Seattle native Sr. Jean Fallon has spent decades working on peace and justice issues around the world.
So we’d say she’s due any thanks and accolades that come her way.
Last week she received the Sister Christine Mulready Peacemaker Award from Pax Christi Metro New York, according to the Northwest Asian Weekly.
Early in her career she got to know first-hand the stories of people who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings when she was assigned to Japan in August 1951. From there she led peace and justice ministry programs in Tokyo. Taking those efforts global, she later conducted world awareness seminars at churches across the United States and served with the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
The Mulready honor is given to a person or persons of faith whose work helps to transform metropolitan New York into a community of peacemakers and justice-seekers.
A good-bye to the Daughters
A story in the Buffalo News notes the end of 166 years of service to the city’s Sisters of Charity Hospital by the order of religious women who founded it.
The Daughters of Charity, which founded Buffalo’s oldest hospital in 1848 and cared for tens of thousands of residents, is sending the last of five sisters who work at the hospital to other ministries.
More than 850 Daughters of Charity have served in Buffalo over the years. The order, which founded or sponsored about 200 hospitals in the United States during the last 191 years, decided last year to pull out of several of those hospitals, including the one in Buffalo.
“It was stunning news,” Peter U. Bergmann, president and chief executive officer of sisters, told the newspaper.
Sr. Janet Keim, provincial councilor for the order, said the Daughters want to bolster some of the community’s other ministries and start new ones in places with “more materially poor people and where needs aren’t being met.”
A find?
Last month, experts started searching for the remains of “Don Quixote” author Miguel de Cervantes at the 17th-century Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid, Spain, where he was buried in 1616.
Already, this historic scavenger hunt has uncovered bones in five areas near his reported burial site, reports the Associated Press. But researchers can’t confirm whether any of the bones belong to him – yet.
The team hopes to begin excavation and finish forensic identification this year.
Bidding adieu
SeacoastOnline reported that Sr. Mary Jo Walsh, 80, principal for the last eight years of Saint Patrick School in Portsmouth, N.H., is leaving.
Her contract was not renewed by the parish pastor and school officials.
“That’s just how things are run here,” she said. “We are all on a one-year contract, and I renew the teachers' contracts each year. The pastor and the committee renew mine.”
After her last day on June 16, Walsh is moving to Sun City Center, Fla. Of her replacement she said: “She is not a sister. So, I'm the ‘last of the Mohicans’ for now.”
Walsh plans to continue wearing her Sisters of Our Lady of Lourdes habit, saying, “I think people like to see a nun once in a while.”
[Lisa Gutierrez is a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., who scans the non-NCR news every week for interesting pieces about sisters. She can be reached at lisa11gutierrez@gmail.com.]