BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--At their annual Silver Tea held April 25, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet recognized the work of Sister Roberta Joseph Sutton, a teacher for many years at Sacred Heart and St. Anthony’s Schools.

She and other members of the order have expanded education in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, opening and administering schools in Georgia and teaching in them since the early 1900s.

The order was founded in the southern French town of Le Puy in 1640 to serve the poor, the sick and orphans. Without habits and uncloistered, they originally worked anonymously with poor children. Upon coming to America, they taught the deaf and entered into teaching and nursing in Georgia.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia were called from their motherhouse in Washington, Ga., to Atlanta in 1909 where they established a novitiate at Sacred Heart Church and opened Sacred Heart School behind the parish.

With approximately 20 sisters in north Georgia, the order taught at St. Anthony’s School and St. Pius X High School in Atlanta and St. Joseph’s School in Marietta. They also taught at Christ the King School in Atlanta.

The second order of women Religious to serve the archdiocese, the sisters taught for consecutive years until 1957, at one point having 58 sisters in north Georgia. Religious principals led St. Anthony’s in the mid-1970s in a transition from an all-white to an African-American school.

The order’s St. Joseph Boys Home was relocated from Washington to Atlanta in 1967 as the Village of St. Joseph for emotionally troubled youth and Sisters of St. Joseph served there until the early 1990s. They helped open St. Anthony’s Church in 1917.

The order continues to have an indirect presence in education in the archdiocese as, “at the parish schools today, the people running them were trained by the nuns,” said Sister Loretta Costa, CSJ, who now raises money for the retired Sisters of St. Joseph.

Sister Costa, 75, entered the order at 15 and has served for 27 years as an administrator. She taught sixth grade at Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Anthony’s Schools and Sacred Heart School in Milledgeville, was development director at Our Lady of Lourdes and supervised support staff at the Village of St. Joseph while living in a residence for youth. She opened and initially ran two archdiocesan personal care homes, St. Thomas and St. Teresa Manors in East Point and Riverdale.

Changes in the St. Joseph order during this century included a leadership transition and a refocusing of its mission. Facing a financial crisis following a fire in a Washington school, the 55 Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia chose in 1922 to become affiliated with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet of St. Louis, also founded in Le Puy. The order remained autonomous until 1967 when it became a part of the St. Louis Province.

Following the Second Vatican Council the order reexamined its purpose and eliminated habits, moved away from convent living with structured prayer times and instead began meeting monthly for prayer and sharing. The sisters returned to their founding mission, with the charism to selflessly promote unity, reconciliation, faith, hope and love “in and through loving and affirming relationships with neighbor and neighbor and neighbor with God.”

Sister Costa said that sisters became more self-directed and “as we moved away from traditional works, I feel that I got in touch with what I wanted to do myself. I think that when you change you grow and when you stop changing you stop growing.”

The order now has eight sisters in the archdiocese working in a variety of ministries.

Having taught for many years, Sister Louise Sommer, CSJ, now serves the sick through a chaplain residency program at the Tri-Hospital Clinical Pastoral Education Center. She offers spiritual support to patients awaiting surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital and those served by the Mercy Mobile Health Care program, including residents of the Imperial Hotel, which offers low-income housing to the otherwise homeless, and Edgewood housing for homeless persons with AIDS.

Sister Sommer taught English for 11 years at St. Pius X High School and served Atlanta parishes as adult education coordinator at Holy Cross Church for five years and director of religious education at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church for seven.

In serving the sick, she enjoys “just being there with them in their journey between life and death, just providing that spiritual presence in their life and honoring their life wherever it is. I just like being there for people.”

As a middle-class woman serving the poor, she said, “I’ve grown in awareness of people’s lives who are very different from mine. I’ve learned to appreciate life wherever it is and whoever it is.”

Sister Sommer said she has enjoyed all of her work and that she also served the poor when teaching, noting that there are many kinds of poverty.

“I’m just proud to be a Sister of St. Joseph and able to serve God’s people in this archdiocese...I have a good time. I do what I like and I like what I do,” Sister Sommer said.

Sister Anne Souto, CSJ, who is now retired and living in Eatonton, recently celebrated 50 years in the order. She said she had a desire to serve the less fortunate, which led her to work from 1991 to 1996 as an instructional aide for mentally retarded senior citizens at the DeKalb County Mental Retardation Center. She gave in-service training and helped her clients work with crafts.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minn., and a master’s degree from St. Louis University in St. Louis.