By Thea Jarvis

The Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, has purchased a 14-room house in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta to be used as a center for ministry to indigent persons with AIDS.

The property, a near half-acre lot on St. Charles Avenue, includes a garage apartment which will serve as living quarters for four Missionaries of Charity who will staff the hospice. The sisters have been staying at St. Anthony’s convent in Atlanta since beginning a foundation here in January.

The archdiocese of Atlanta facilitated the purchase of the house, arranging for local real estate brokers, inspectors and attorneys. Additionally, the archdiocese plans to contribute $50,000 towards renovation expenses.

Anno Hardage, archdiocesan director of operation who acted as local contact for the Missionaries, said the sisters have examined a variety of options – an apartment building, an old school, brownstones, even the convent at St. Paul the Cross parish – before choosing the property at 995 St. Charles Avenue.

When the Missionaries were driven through the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood and arrived at the house, Sister M. Dolores, MC, the order’s regional superior for the eastern U.S. and Canada who had flown from New York to direct the search, “immediately looked in and knew it was the right place,” Ms. Hardage said.

The house had operated as a day care center and some interior walls had already been removed to enlarge the space, explained Rena Sartain, a commercial real estate agent with The William B. Hare Company.

“It was the last place we looked on the day (Sister Dolores) came to town,” said Mrs. Sartain, who spent over six months working with the Missionaries.

The house and yard had looked strangely familiar on that first visit, she said. Indeed, the site turned out to be the old Happy Day Nursery, where Mrs. Sartain had played as a child.

“It’s really a small world and a big coincidence,” she said, adding that the building’s sound structure and functional layout appealed to the sisters.

“They had a vision of something,” said Bill Hare, president of Hare realtors and a parishioner at Holy Spirit Church in Atlanta. Hare was surprised that the sisters combined shrewd business sense with quiet unworldliness in their quest for the right location.

On one occasion, the Missionaries sought his advice on several properties near the Atlanta Municipal Market. In conversations among themselves, he noticed, the sisters revealed an unusual awareness of consumer pitfalls. But faith remained their bottom line.

“We know our prayers will be answered and you’ll find us what we need,” Sister Dolores had told him.

Confident of the Missionaries’ prayers, Hare had replied, “If it exists, we’ll find it.” Shortly after that exchange, they found themselves in Virginia-Highlands.

The gold-painted structure on St. Charles Avenue was most recently home to Pratt’s Day Nursery. In testimony to its past, oversized Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Tweetie characters still hang between the house’s second story windows. Two sets of stone steps lead uphill to a porch dotted with now-empty flower boxes. In back, a detached garage, with an upstairs apartment and a lower level destined to become a chapel and receiving area, has been targeted for cleanup and renovation.

St. John Neumann parishioner Sue Fearney and her husband, Bill, are coordinating contractors, architects and volunteers for the garage’s transformation. Mrs. Fearney, an IBM communications specialist and a weekly volunteer at Central Presbyterian Church’s homeless shelter, hopes to procure partial funding for the renovation through IBM’s Community Fund.

She has worked with the Missionaries since last December, attracted by their simple lifestyle, deep spirituality and hands-on approach to ministry. When the sisters moved to St. Anthony’s in January, they immediately began visiting people in the neighborhood and walked miles to Grady Hospital to visit the AIDS clinic, she said.

“They were absolutely remarkable,” agreed Ms. Hardage, citing the sisters’ steadfastness and sense of urgency in wanting to get their work underway. “They can ferret out the needy quicker than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Dr. Sharne Sheehy, who last year appealed directly to Mother Teresa for help with homeless AIDS/HIV victims she treats at Grady’s Infectious Disease Clinic, said a small core of health care professionals can easily assist the Missionaries in their work.

“There are at least 10 people” at Grady who have expressed an interest so far, Dr. Sheehy said. In addition, she has a “huge long list of volunteers” who learned of the sisters’ presence in Atlanta and have called to offer help.

Once the hospice is underway, Dr. Sheehy expects the Grady connection to involve medical backup, procedural guidelines, linen laundering and contaminated waste disposal. Patient referrals will be made through Grady and other metro hospitals. Prospective residents will be offered an orientation program to acquaint them with hospice routine; the sisters do not provide television or radio and some patients may reject restricted environment, she indicated.

Ultimately, Dr. Sheehy said, “The sisters will select their own patients.”

During their time of waiting and planning, the Missionaries have been doing their best to learn basic nursing skills. To them, sickness is “not a clinical issue,” but an opportunity for ministry, Dr. Sheehy said. “Until they get their feet wet, they will need a lot of help” in understanding the care required for AIDS management.

The house on St. Charles seems a perfect fit for the sisters’ Atlanta ministry, which began with a plea from then Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, in 1988 and moved forward after a request from the late Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, followed by Dr. Sheehy’s contact with Mother Teresa.

According to realtor Rene Sartain, the house the Missionaries have chosen is “accessible to public transportation, identifiable to those in need and located in a mixed-use neighborhood” zoned for multi-family dwellings and bordering low-income population centers.

The sisters “will have guests in their house just like you and I have guests,” Mrs. Sartain explained. “The people they comfort will be very temporary guests,” because of their illness.

She expects little negative reaction to Missionaries’ presence in the area because of the existing diversity of the neighborhood and the humanitarian aspect of the sisters’ work.

“As soon as people have a true understanding of what they are doing,” said Mrs. Sartain, and the “contained” nature of the ministry, “they will realize they can only benefit from that.”