BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--Since being called to the Archdiocese of Atlanta in 1985, the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge of Mexico have quietly helped build Hispanic ministries in various churches while sharing their love of St. Francis of Assisi.

One of three orders of women Religious serving the needs of North Georgia’s steadily growing Hispanic community estimated at 350,000, the Franciscans have four sisters who assist at St. Mark’s Church, Clarkesville, and the Cathedral of Christ the King and the Mission of San Felipe de Jesús in Atlanta.

The sisters preserve their Mexican heritage. Wearing white habits in summer months, they serve in parishes by day and return to their Atlanta convent at night. There they make bows with images of Jesus, shells lined with pearls to hold baptismal waters, candles decorated with grape clusters, golden crosses with angels, and rosaries, all requested by Hispanic pastors for parish children’s first Communion and baptism.

The community was founded in 1897 in Zapopan, Jalisco, by Sister María Librada of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who is now being beatified. The original work was to aid unmarried pregnant women and eventually sisters began working in hospitals, schools and orphanages. The sisters follow the spiritual rule of poverty, chastity and obedience of their spiritual father, St. Francis, who founded the Franciscans in 1209, and seek support from their patroness, Our Lady of Refuge, a Marian devotion brought to Mexico from Italy.

Mother Superior Marta Herrera, who holds a degree in education from the University of Guadalajara and one in Franciscan spirituality from the Pontificio Ateneo Antonianum in Rome, has served the congregation for 42 years and the archdiocese for nine, working in Atlanta at Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart of Mary parishes. She currently works at St. Mark’s where she assists with pastoral care at hospitals, providing clothes and other items to the poor, with baptisms and in premarital counseling.

“There are many Hispanics that need attention,” she said in Spanish, adding that the number of Hispanics is 350 percent higher than when she initially arrived in the archdiocese. There is a need at St. Mark’s, she said, for more home visits, social services and Spanish Masses. With only one Catholic church to serve Clarkesville, Clayton and Cornelia, she said, “It is necessary to open a mission in Cornelia because there are many (Protestant) religious groups that offer all the (social) services in Spanish” and this is leading Hispanics to convert.

Sister Herrera helped initiate a nine-day celebration of St. Francis last October involving processions from homes to St. Mark’s Church with an image of the saint, dances from Michoacan, and corn, fruits and other typical Mexican foods.

Another member of the order, Sister Dolores Degracia of Mexico, 33, began serving as director of youth religious education for Hispanics at the Cathedral of Christ the King in 1996. She directs classes in confirmation, Communion preparation and summer Bible school and plans the multicultural “qermés” country fair, held twice yearly.

Through fund-raisers, she hopes to expand the cathedral’s Hispanic outreach to unemployed youth with alcohol and drug problems she has encountered by beginning a drug rehabilitation program at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta. She added that she often lacks space to hold events.

The order has also attracted vocations in North Georgia. Two native Mexicans living in the archdiocese have begun programs in spiritual formation to enter the Franciscan congregation and recently returned to their homeland to complete two years of novitiate training in Zapopan.

Susana Trejo, a 26-year-old Mexican postulant from Dalton, has assisted Sister Herrera at St. Mark’s since 1997 where she enjoyed working with children and other youth. She believes it is important for children to learn both their Hispanic and American heritage and that they “require more attention from their parents as well as their teachers.”

Since many Hispanics come to America to earn money for their families, Trejo said, “The parents work too much. They don’t have enough time to pay attention to the children. They have little time to dedicate to their children.” Children receive their first schooling from their parents about religion and about their heritage, she said, adding that children often learn incorrect Spanish.

The postulant was drawn to the congregation because of its focus on the spirituality of St. Francis, who practiced humility, charity, sacrifice and self-denial.

Esperanza Silva, 23, came to Conyers from Mexico in 1994. She became a postulant for the order in 1997, a grace that she partially attributes to the prayers of people at the Mission of San Felipe de Jesús. The mission is focusing on evangelization, she said, to reach out to those Hispanics who do not come to church because of work schedules or lack of transportation. She participated in Friday night talks on the Gospel offered at the mission for a year and recently spoke on sacraments at an outreach mission held in homes and Hispanic centers. She has also visited the sick at hospitals and in homes.

“There is a lot of work to do to help lonely people with depression...They feel lonely because they have to completely change their cultures. Sometimes they have to leave their families,” she said.