By Rita McInerney

Sixty years after leaving the protective love of her family in Bolivia to enter the semi-cloistered congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Sister Laura Zambrana, A.C.J., says with absolute faith that “God is always with me. I don’t think He has ever deserted me.”

The tiny nun with the lively brown eyes, whose vocation was spent mainly as a teacher of English, found a new ministry after arriving in Atlanta in late summer, 1985, with four other members of her order.

She joined Sister Pilar Dalmau, A.C.J., in visiting the Cuban detainees held in the Atlanta federal prison until they rioted last Nov. 23.

“I never thought I would get into that, but it is very rewarding. They still write letters to me. For Mother’s Day I had a letter from one telling me I was like a mother to him.”

She was one of a small group that visited the detainees regularly for prayer and Bible study before the riot and 11-day siege. On occasion, the women would give Saturday retreats for them.

“The first time we went, it was just Pilar and myself. They were scared and so were we. Two guards stood nearby. The chaplain told the men, ‘I hope you respond to these sisters and that nothing happens. If you don’t respond, it will be the first and last time, Behave.’”

They did behave, Sister Laura said. “They changed and we changed. In the beginning it was all long faces. Later, they were all smiles.”

After the rioting Cubans were shipped out to prisons around the country, the sisters and volunteers continued to support them in any way they could. They traveled to Fort Gordon near Augusta with Father Ray Dowling, prison chaplain held hostage for the 11 days of the siege. There they participated in a closed circuit television Mass that he celebrated in a small visitors’ room. Although they couldn’t see the Cubans, “they could see and hear us,” Sister Laura said. “We gave them messages.”

When she was “destined” here in 1985 with the other Handmaids, the newcomers tried to seek out the Spanish-speaking they hoped to help spiritually. “We went from door-to-door,” and often had doors slammed in their faces, Sister Laura said.

“When I moved here I didn’t want to get involved in full-time work because I feel I don’t have the strength.” Nevertheless, she helped out on the Mercy Van which brings health care to street people, in addition to her visits to the Cubans in the federal prison.

Nowadays she limits herself to teaching and helps her sister Handmaids in any way she can. She teaches Spanish to a middle-level executive once a week and English to a Spanish woman, a lawyer, married to an executive of a major Atlanta corporation.

The long journey to the happy time of her 60^th anniversary began for Sister Laura when she was a high school senior in Cochabamba, Bolivia. There were a group of girls, she among them, who thought they wanted to be Handmaids like the sisters who staffed their school.

The half-serious desire crystallized when a “VIP from the Handmaids in Rome: visited the academy. After graduation, she left the sheltered family life she knew and ventured to Rome to begin her new life.

The transition was not too drastic, she said. “I come from a very protective family…I could never go out alone. I had to be with somebody – my mother, brother, or a servant.”

Life for the young novice was very strict and it was hard, in the beginning, to adjust. After one year in the Eternal City she was sent to London to continue her studies, going back to Rome for the final year.

After that her teaching assignments took her to Argentina, Chile, Panama, Baltimore and finally Philadelphia where the North American province has its headquarters.

Vatican II brought much change to the Handmaids who before had been involved in teaching and retreats. “Now we are involved in everything – nursing, prison work, evangelization.”

And Sister Laura likes it that way. “I am very open to the times. I see how the times are changing, we have to adjust ourselves to it.”

The realization, as a young girl, that she had a religious vocation didn’t make Sister Irene Halahan, A.C.J., very happy. That was more than 50 years ago.

“Religion always interested me, even when I was 11 or 12. I dreamed of being a missionary in Africa. Then when I was about 17 I was quite sure this was what the Lord wanted me to do. And I wasn’t very happy about it.”

Life was “very comfortable” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she grew up, the fifth of seven children of Irish parents. “Everybody had servants, you didn’t have to be super-rich for that. One part of me, the spiritual, was happy. But there were things I didn’t want to give up, parties. I loved music, the piano and guitar, and didn’t want to give it up.” Later she realized music would be part of her new life.

“I entered because of the Eucharistic life of the order,” she explained. (The Eucharist is at the heart of the congregational mission of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.) Life at home was very disciplined, so the discipline (of the novitiate) wasn’t that big a deal. There was no big period of adjustment. I just knew it was the life for me.”

“I never doubted. I’m very, very happy,” she said, looking back over a half century as a Handmaid.

Sister Irene works with the Hispanics and is librarian at Holy Cross parish in Tucker. She estimates that there are between 200 and 400 Hispanics who attend Mass although attendance is uneven. Most do not register or make a commitment. “You have to work hard to get them to accept the American way of living, you have to work in that culture.”

“We want the two communities to get together. My pastor (Father Daniel A. Shanahan, O.P.) is very much for integrating. ‘I’m not ready to have two parishes,’ he has said.”

The parish is lucky, she added, to have two “vibrant” Hispanic deacons, Enrique Galvis and Jose Narvaez.

Congregational life for the Handmaids changed in the years following Vatican II. “We (North American province) were radical in our changes…Rome moved slowly,” Sister Irene said. But that was good, she admitted. “It gave everyone the chance to gradually see and study…”

Questionnaires were sent to each province (the order serves in Europe, Asia, Africa, as well as the Americas); the general chapter shifted through the numerous proposals and finally many of the changes originally proposed by the North American province were made “part and parcel” of the new mission statement which modified the habit and changed the lifestyle of the members while preserving the apostolic mission to work for justice for the poor.

“We looked at our own charisma as being an active area,” she said.

The modified habit members now wear, street-length tailored dresses and veils, is not required at all times. “The habit is not always witness to the life, it’s just a garb. When I go with the Hispanics on Sunday I dress in a habit. Other times, with Hispanic youth, I don’t wear the habit. They want to see us as part of themselves.”

Sister Irene was among members of her order leaving Cuba in June of 1959. Castro had come into power in January. She vividly remembers being hassled by three soldiers at the airport who questioned her, in Spanish, as to her nationality and if she had any money. She refused to answer them in Spanish and replied to their persistent questions in English. “I had five American dollars.”

The plane finally in the air, everyone breathed easier and an Augustinian priest quitting that order’s university, spoke for all when he remarked, “We’re safely out at last.”

Two years ago she attended a reunion in Florida with some of the girls she had taught at the school in Cuba. It was like a dream come true for her. “I had longed to see them again. I was always fond of the students, even when they gave me a hard time.”

In addition to teaching 11 years in Cuba, Sister Irene has been assigned to Buenos Aires, Florida, Bolivia and Rome.

Her 50^th anniversary was a special day of joy for two reasons. She was witness to the installation of Archbishop Eugene A. Marino and was the center of a celebration later the same day at a parish Mass and reception. During Mass she renewed her vows in English and Spanish with Sister Marietta Jansen, A.C.J., superior of the Atlanta community.