By Rita McInerney

For most of six days each week, Sister Martha Herrera, R.F.R., is the presence of the Church at the Grant Park Apartments off Boulevard.

On the seventh day, her day off, which happens to be Monday, she visits the sick in hospitals and at home, takes others to clinics or to the Catholic Center in midtown for legalization processing.

Hispanics, from Honduras, El Salvador and primarily Mexico, occupy 100 units in the 302-unit complex in southeast Atlanta. A corner apartment, 1290A Roberts Drive, is Sister Martha’s “office” and center of activity. Here she, Sister Olivia Cardenas, another Mexican Franciscan, and Father Raimundo Solano, O.F.M., from Sacred Heart Church, minister to a community of about 300 men, women and children.

The center is sponsored by the Hispanic Apostolate of the archdiocese of Atlanta. Before the apostolate leased the apartment more than two years ago, Sister Martha visited the people in their homes, holding instruction classes, counseling and befriending homesick, bewildered people.

The center, “has proved a great service,” according to Sister Pilar Dalmau, A.C.J., head of the Hispanic Apostolate. She credits Carmin Macias, coordinator of evangelization for the Hispanic Pastoral Council, and a pioneer in visiting the residents of Grant Park several years ago, and Jose “Pepe” Montero, head of the council.

“They thought of this as a way of expressing a preference for the poor,” Sister Pilar said. “They have a place to meet and build community in a small neighborhood,” Sister Martha added in Spanish interpreted by Sister Pilar.

Hispanics celebrate liturgical seasons with fiestas and processions expressing the appropriate joy or solemnity. Such events are faithfully recorded by Sister Martha’s camera and cover the bulletin board in the small front room of the apartment. Other photos fill her scrapbook.

Captured by the lens are children with Palm Sunday palms, in Holy Thursday procession before an altar garlanded with white blossoms, teenagers in Nativity and Holy week costumes, young soccer players in Piedmont Park, parties celebrating First Communion, Confirmation, birthdays. Sister Martha records them all.

The center brings the comfort of Catholicism as they knew it at home to people tossed by oppression and poverty into a strange country.

It is providing spiritual solace to men and women confused by immigration laws and worn down by menial work, low pay, and the duty of raising young children in a society ridden with crime and addiction to hard drugs and drink.

It uplifts them with worship and Rosary services, prepares them for the sacraments with catechetical and Bible instruction.

The center provides a place, each Tuesday night, for the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Beer and whiskey offer the men temporary escape from harsh reality and temptation is nearby.

The proximity of a liquor store on Boulevard right beside the entrance to the complex is “a major concern” to the apartment management. Mrs. Beatriz Zamora, leasing agent, said “it has changed the neighborhood since it opened several years ago.” There have been several shootings, she said, and the police are often called to the site.

Police visibility has improved in the complex, she admitted. “We’ve been talking with Major Eldrin Bell (Zone Three commander). They’re doing a better job, although not as good as we want.”

On its part, she said, management has stopped leasing on a monthly basis and has returned to one-year leases in an effort to improve tenant stability. New grill doors of black metal are being installed on front doors as a security measure against robbers and intruders who sleep in vacant units.

The battle against alcoholism being waged at AA meetings and counseling at the Catholic Center is appreciated by Mrs. Zamora. “All of what they’ve been doing has helped a lot,” she said. “…I hear good reports from the people. She’s (Sister Martha) always up to something.”

Encouraging to Sisters Pilar and Martha is that management and the Atlanta police are trying to improve the quality of life. Police patrol the complex around the clock; management also employs a security patrol.

Sister Martha’s hours being about 2 in the afternoon and continue until 10 or 11 at night. She visits mothers and children in the homes in the afternoons, and is also available at the center. Mothers short on cash can send young children to 1290A for bread and staples or for bags of clothes from among the stacks of donated goods piled high in the two small classrooms on the second floor.

A good neighbor in the next building, Rosa Henriquez, 33, keeps an eye on the apartment when Sister Martha isn’t there. Her home, cheerful with fresh white curtains at the windows, is pointed out with pride by the sisters as the best-kept in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Henriquez came here in 1985 from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Her husband Raimundo had come years before. They married 18 years ago. The youngest child, Eric, one year old, is the only one of the six to be born in the Unites States. The oldest, a daughter, is 14.

“We cannot survive in our country.” Rosa Henriquez said in Spanish. It is necessary for the husband to come first, find work and then bring the family, she explained.

Her hopes are all for her children, she said. They can study and get the education needed for the future. For her, “there is no time to learn English.” Her children interpret for her when needed, and she has learned to cope with food shopping.

Rosa and other mothers in the complex bring their youngsters to the center for health care when the Mercy Mobile Health Unit holds clinic hours every other Tuesday evening. For religious nurturing, preparation for the sacraments, instruction is available throughout the week. On Saturday night, after the Mass, Father Solano and Sisters Martha and Olivia teach classes in catechetics and Scripture in the three small rooms.

On one recent Saturday night, young Mexicans proudly wore new soccer uniforms in the native tricolors of red, green and white. They crowded into the first three rows of folding chairs for Mass in the room dominated by a large colored picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall near the altar.

The young men would be competing in uniform for the first time in the Piedmont Park league the next day. When Mass ended they grouped for pictures around the image of the patroness of Mexican Catholics. After Sister Martha had snapped pictures for display on the bulleting board, she posed among them, smiling and holding a soccer shirt over her Franciscan brown habit.

The Saturday night Mass celebrated by Father Solano, also a native of Mexico, usually draws an overflow crowd of about 60 men, women and children. Worshipers kneel in the kitchen and the other first floor room when all chairs are occupied in the front room.

During Lent the priest is conducting several special three-night missions. One week is for children, another is for youth, one for women, and one for the men. On Ash Wednesday, Sister Martha said, about 150 people came for their ashes. A para-liturgy was held in the evening.

Children and young people are the focus of much center activity. While many of the youngsters have the love and care of parents and grandparents, Sister Martha makes special effort to ease the loneliness and homesickness of the young men. Newly arrived and isolated by language, they live in groups in the apartments and work as laborers or in the nearby mop factory.

At 1290A Roberts Drive they find community. They worship and sing praise to God in their native Spanish, secure among their own kind and the reminders of home such religious gatherings recall. They can be counseled, consoled or scolded by the priest and sisters. They can laugh together. Best of all their aimlessness dissolves amid a new “family.”

Youth group members don’t confine their activities to Grant Park. They reach out and interact with young Hispanics at Sacred Heart Church and throughout the metropolitan area.

On the first Sunday of each month they join with the Sacred Heart group for a retreat, sports and recreation after the 1:30 p.m. Hispanic Mass.

Their group leaders meet twice each month with other Hispanic youth leaders at the convent of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to plan activities. Last year when the Hispanic Youth Encounter was held in Piedmont Park, the Grant Park group was the largest attending, Sister Pilar said.

The Grant Park connection with Sacred Heart is strong and goes back to the 1960s and the arrival of Cubans fleeing Castro. Now, the Sunday Hispanic Mass congregation is “essentially Mexican,” Father Dan O’Connor, pastor, said, and draws a “nice crowd and is growing…and they support the church.”

Years ago, Father Solano began saying Mass outdoors in Grant Park for those who didn’t have Sunday transportation to Sacred Heart. This continues to be a nice weather custom, with the Saturday Liturgy celebrated in the open space beside 1290A.

Sister Martha joins the congregation at Sacred Heart for Mass and afterward conducts the religious education program. The parish pays her salary at Grant Park, Father O’Connor said, as a “mission outreach.”

This outreach is bringing their church to people wrenched from their faith tradition and groping in a strange land. For the youth, the hope of the community, its success is illustrated by a large drawing of Jesus on the wall of the front room.

Created by one of the boys, Jesus is pictured with His arms outstretched. The cross is outlined behind Him. Around His head are printed the words, “Iglesia Catholica.” Soon, Sister Martha said, pictures of the families will be superimposed on the folds of His white garment.