Pastoral & Social | Heritageccvi

We are called to promote human dignity and to educate for social justice, especially through health care, education, pastoral concerns, social work, and other forms of ministry. We show special preference for the needs of the poor. From the very beginning, we have reached out to serve where no one was available to tend to those left alone and uncared for.

After serving as a nurse, in hospital administration, and as a congregational leader, Sr. Juanita Albracht felt called to work with the Peruvian people. She was inspired by how “they could be happy in such extreme poverty. This called me to want to experience their lives with them.”

Sr. Juanita moved to Chimbote in 1997 and became director of the Congregation’s clinic in Santa Clara. She oversaw the construction of the clinic, established the first hospice in all South America, and in 2015 guided the creation of the Incarnate Word Health System in Chimbote.

In 1964, in response to an appeal from the Church, six Sisters left San Antonio for Chimbote, Peru.
Pictured in a special gray habit are Sisters Charles Marie Frank, Mary Mark Gerken, Maria Felicitas Villegas, Rosalina Acosta, Louis Katharine Schuler, and Gwendolyn Grothoff. Mothers Mary Clare Cronly and Mary Calvary Le Page accompanied the Sisters to the airport.

Sister Mary Mark Gerken teaching in Peru in 1965.

Sembrando Infancia—Sowing Seeds for a Healthy Childhood—focuses on improving the health of children under five years of ages, as well as that of pregnant mothers.

The first five Sisters to go to the mission in Zambia were (left to right) Leticia de Jesús Rodríguez, Bertha Elena Flores, Rosa Margarita Valdés, Grace O’Meara, and María Cristina Vargas.

In 2000, the Congregation opened a mission in Zambia. The Mother and Infant Care Program was established by the Sisters to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Since its inception, the program has been extremely effective in achieving its goal. Sr. María Cristina Vargas (left) and Sr. Rosa Margarita Valdés (right) were the first to go to Zambia.

The first social services center in San Antonio was initiated in 1940 in Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in San Antonio, led by Sr. Mary of Victory Lewis (pictured).

In the 1950s, Sisters in Mexico opened and operated social service centers in Mexico City and other cities. The centers provided clinics, but the Sisters also taught business classes, sewing, and religion.
Sr. Rosalia Montes (center, with blue shawl, wearing glasses) worked in Oaxaca.

In 1973, Sisters in Mexico started a new form of ministry called Pastoral Popular. Sisters sought out, lived with, and ministered to the underserved, focusing on daily contact with the people at their work and in their homes. Here, Sr. Ofelia Lozano visits a parishioner in Mexico City.

Pastoral Popular serves indigenous people in remote parts of Mexico. The first pastoral communities were established in the Mezquital Valley and in Cuernavaca, Torreon, Tehuantepec, and Veracruz.
Sr. María Teresa Fernandez was selected as the first coordinator of the Pastoral Popular Communities

Since 1973, more than 100 Sisters from Mexico have created and worked in numerous pastoral communities in Mexico. They assist the indigenous, displaced, and underserved.

Sister Elizabeth Murray Campbell worked in Cuernevaca, Mexico, with Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos.

The Cooperativa de Café Tienmelonia Nich Klum, Chiapas, is a coffee cooperative that serves the indigenous people of Chiapas. By cultivating and trading organic coffee, men and women generate income and provide a better quality of life for their families.

Since the cooperative was founded, hundreds of people have been trained to work in the organic coffee industry. This has a positive impact on nearly 1,500 families.

Sisters Peggy Bonnot, Margaret Snyder, and Marianne Kramer founded El Puente in 1999 to connect Spanish-speaking immigrants in the mid-Missouri area to church and community resources.
While serving as El Puente’s Executive Director, Sr. Peggy also accompanied clients on doctor visits and translated for them.

Sr. Margaret Carew spent half her life ministering to inmates at the Bexar County (San Antonio) Jail. In 2010 she was recognized for her 40 years of service—30 as the jail’s first female chaplain and 10 as a volunteer.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, Sr. Mary Cunningham established a residential center in Limerick, Ireland, for adults with learning disabilities. She worked in San Antonio at the Patrician Movement, a drug and alcohol treatment center, for more than 30 years.

Sr. Louise Mair (center) worked for many years as a cook at the Provincial House in St. Louis, Missouri. She later served in Cambio Puente, Peru, living in a simple house the Sisters built themselves.
Sr. Louise baked bread to share with her neighbors; she was very much loved by the people of Cambio Puente.

Sr. Rita Prendergast, after a long career teaching college English, went to Peru. In 1985 she helped establish 1985 the mission in Huancané. She learned Spanish and ministered to prisoners.

Pictured is Sr. Anne Marie Burke in Huancané. The area had been abandoned by the Peruvian government, allowing terrorist groups to threaten local residents. The Sisters nonetheless taught and trained catechists, organized programs for the youth, and visited prisoners in jail.

In 1981, three Sisters opened a mission in Cambio Puente, Peru, where they worked with exploited campesinos on the outskirts of Chimbote.
Sr. Rosaleen Harold (pictured holding a baby) was one of the three Sisters who went to Cambio Puente. Sr. Rosaleen served in Peru for more than 30 years.

At the beginning of the millennium, Sisters from Mexico opened an educational center in Ixcan, Guatemala, at the invitation of the local bishop. The region is multi-ethnic, made up of displaced persons who sought refuge some fourteen years earlier from conflicts in Central America.

Pictured is Sr. Emilia Gracia.

Sr. Martha Josefina Rea (left) González, concerned that the elderly were not being treated with dignity, co-founded the Center for Care of Older Adults in 1996 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Sr. Martha Josefina and Sr. Delfina María Moreno Verduzco gave older women and men tools to live with courage and acceptance. Sr. Martha Josefina also trained hundreds of caregivers, geriatric specialists, and family members to minister to the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of the elderly of Guadalajara.