'New Possibilities'

Sparkill Dominican Sisters look to future as they mark 125th anniversary

By MARY ANN POUST

The Dominican Sisters of Sparkill have launched a year of celebration of the congregation's 125th anniversary, and the theme they selected will meet the approval of anyone who knows their ministry.

It's "Women Making a Difference," and that's what the sisters have been doing since an English-born convert, Alice Mary Thorpe, arrived in Manhattan with her sister Lucy in 1872 to live and work among the city's poor.

Sowing the seeds of what is now the 416-member Congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Thorpe sisters--in collaboration with the Dominican Fathers' provincial superior in New York--established St. Joseph Mission Home to serve as their base and as a refuge for needy women and girls.

A century and a quarter later, Sister Barbara Lenniger, O.P., is doing much the same thing at Thorpe Family Residence Inc. in the Bronx, a transitional shelter for homeless mothers and children, a supportive permanent housing program also for needy mothers and children and a range of community outreach activities.

The Sparkill Dominicans founded Thorpe 13 years ago with the establishment of the shelter at a time of much homelessness in the city and few, if any, places for women with children to go.

"We were answering a need," Sister Barbara said, "and I think we've definitely made a difference in our neighborhood."

In another way, the work of Sister Una McCormack, O.P., archdiocesan director of child care, has made a difference to countless thousands of children over the years.

Making child care her mission after joining the congregation in 1944, she began as a social worker aiding orphaned, abandoned or abused children and went on to head two major foster care agencies: Cardinal McCloskey Children and Family Services in White Plains and later the Catholic Home Bureau in Manhattan. There, she oversaw development in the mid-1980s of Incarnation Children's Center, believed to be the nation's first residence for babies and young children with AIDS.

"God blessed me with a lot of energy," Sister Una told CNY not long ago, explaining why she is still active after more than 50 years of ministry.

Then there's Sister Jean Marshall, O.P., who left a 21-year teaching career in 1983 to devote her full-time energies to helping the Cambodian refugees flooding into the Bronx from the killing fields of their homeland.

The shoestring resettlement agency she started in a spare room of St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church has become St. Rita's Center for Immigrant and Refugee Services with five locations and a proud record of serving Vietnamese boat people, ethnic cleansing victims from Kosovo and many more desperate and frightened groups from troubled lands around the world.

President Clinton honored her in a White House ceremony last December for "making dreams come true."

The stories could go on and on. Sister Dorothy Farley, O.P., for instance, heads the International Catholic Organizations Information Center, which seeks to maintain a Catholic presence at the United Nations; Sister Margaret Ryan, O.P., has been principal for 26 years of the nationally acclaimed Aquinas High School in the Bronx; Sister Elizabeth Hasselt, O.P., is executive director of Encore Community Services, which she co-founded in 1977 to serve elderly and homeless people in the Times Square theater district of Manhattan.

Other sisters are school administrators and teachers at all levels of education, child care workers, social workers, nurses, artists, counselors, spiritual directors, librarians and researchers. They work with undocumented immigrants, persons with AIDS and drug and alcohol abusers.

On property carved out of the congregation's motherhouse campus in Sparkill in Rockland County, Sister Ursula Joyce, O.P., directs Thorpe Village, a 200-unit complex of affordable housing for the elderly which opened in 1981, and Dowling Gardens, an assisted living facility with 111 units, which opened in 1996.

Plans for the programs took shape in 1979, she explained, with the closing of St. Agnes Home, an orphanage that was the original ministry of the sisters in Sparkill. "We began to look around for some socially responsible way to use our property, and one of the most outstanding needs in the area was for senior citizen housing," said Sister Ursula, who joined the congregation in 1952.

"The sisters have been very supportive of this ministry and very involved in it as staff," she said. "It's been very satisfying work."

Celebrating 125 years, the sisters are looking ahead toward their mission in the new millennium--while continuing their commitment to the congregation's goal of prayer, preaching and the ministry of justice, carried out by responding to the needs of the time.

Though down from their peak of 910 members in 1966, the Sparkill Dominicans remain one of the larger congregations of women religious in the archdiocese--although they share with other congregations a sharp decline in new vocations after the Second Vatican Council.

Still, Vatican II brought much that is positive to the congregation. Many new ministries opened to them in areas of peace and social justice, housing, pastoral care and more. Most took the option of laying aside the habit for conservative modern dress considered appropriate for their professions.

And although there is only one novice now in Sparkill, the outlook is brighter in the congregation's small community in Pakistan where three women are currently in the novitiate and two were professed earlier this year.

To change that picture, the congregation has a number of strategies to attract new vocations including, most recently, a Web site launched within the last year at www.sparkill.org. There, interested persons are invited to "join a group of joyful women praising God and serving God's people" at monthly "soup and Scripture" evenings and in other ways.

As Dominicans, the sisters are members of a religious order founded in the 13th century by Dominic de Guzman. Dominicans, who use the religious initials O.P., for Order of Preachers, are dedicated to bringing the Word of God around the world through a range of ministries.

The Sparkill sisters, outlining their commitment to Dominican ideals in their constitution, see themselves as a "Gospel-centered" community "freely dedicated to the word of God" and acting in a way "that publicly speaks of the risen Christ working in us through the power of the Holy Spirit."

To mark their anniversary, a number of events have taken place and more are scheduled, including the December dedication at the motherhouse of Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel which will seat 300, a symposium on Catholic social teaching at their St. Thomas Aquinas College on March 29, a concert and art exhibit in the spring and a 125th anniversary Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral May 6.

A new leadership team was elected at the congregation's chapter July 6. The new officers, who will serve for four years, are Sisters Maryann Summa, O.P., president, and five councilors: Sisters Muriel Cooney, O.P., Mary Dunning, O.P., Catherine Patrice Morgan, O.P., Nancy Richter, O.P., and Margaret Sweeney, O.P.

"This is an exciting time for us in the Church," said Sister Maryann, who entered the congregation in 1960. "Every year brings new possibilities, possibilities of new ministries.

"We're a community of women who are constantly reaching out, so it's a matter of just being open to where the Spirit leads us."

Alice Mary Thorpe, the congregation's founder, was born in 1844 and was a member of the Anglican Church before becoming a Catholic.

Shortly after opening St. Joseph Mission House at 697 Second Ave. in Manhattan she requested permission to adopt the observance of a religious rule. Cardinal John McCloskey approved the request, and on May 6, 1876, the Congregation of the Holy Rosary was born as Alice Mary Thorpe, her sister and one other woman received the long white habit of St. Dominic.

Alice Thorpe professed final vows as Sister Catharine M. Antoninus and became prioress with the title Mother Antoninus.

After her death in 1879, Mother Dominic Dowling established the fledgling congregation, which had already moved twice, on a firm legal and financial basis. In 1880, she suspended the care of indigent women to attend to the urgent need at the time of caring for neglected children wandering the streets.

Around the same time, a benefactor helped the sisters buy property on East 63rd Street in Manhattan where they built Holy Rosary Convent, which continued in use until 1971.

Within a year of its opening, the convent had taken in 128 children, many of them committed by the city, and the numbers were increasing to the point that a wing had to be added in 1882.

To provide a more suitable environment, in 1884 the sisters bought property in Sparkill where 25 boys were housed in what was called St. Agnes Home. Many more had to be turned away, while the sisters planned to construct cottages to enlarge the facilities. During construction, they erected tents to shelter the children, and by 1889 the complex had grown to 11 buildings.

The congregation's motherhouse and novitiate were moved to the 100-acre Sparkill property in 1895. There were 71 professed sisters and 15 novices. Disaster struck on Aug. 28, 1899, however, when fire destroyed the home.

The sisters and boys were moved to the former archdiocesan seminary in Troy until a new building opened in Sparkill in 1902. By the 1950s, however, changes in foster care resulted in more children being placed with families rather than in institutional settings such as St. Agnes, and the home was closed in 1979.

The congregation already had begun to establish alternate programs. In 1952, the novitiate building became a college for sisters, forerunner of St. Thomas Aquinas College--an accredited four-year college on a 35-acre campus that was part of the original property.

A girls high school on the property opened in the 1960s and continued until 1980. It is now the site of the Venture Day Treatment Center, a program for developmentally disabled children and adults, and of graduate programs of Long Island University.

The Thorpe Village and Dowling Garden units for the elderly take up another 10 acres.

"The whole campus has become a social service center. So much has been developed, serving everyone from young handicapped children to college age students to the elderly," said Sister Ursula.

"Every age is being helped," she said, "and I'm proud of the fact that we've kind of been a model for other religious communities of how they can use their property and facilities in areas where the needs are great."

Much of the congregation's work has taken place beyond its Sparkill headquarters. By 1900, the sisters had begun teaching in elementary and high schools--an undertaking which was eventually to become the congregation's principal ministry.

Also in 1900 the congregation began to branch out to other states, when four sisters were invited to Missouri to teach at a small school in Jonesburg. There are now 66 sisters serving in Missouri, 10 serving in Montana and 23 in other states. A community in Pakistan established 40 years ago has 19 sisters.

An associate program begun in 1980 now has 43 members, including 17 in the archdiocese.