It’s back to school time for many students in the United States, and at one school in Tennessee, students are excited to have a couple of new faces in the classrooms.
Back to school
How refreshing to able to write about women religious joining, not leaving, a school staff.
In Memphis, Sr. Rita Marie and Sr. Marie Monique (we’re frustrated certain papers choose to omit last names) are the first nuns to teach at St. Benedict at Auburndale High School in 20 years. The school started its new year last week.
“There’s a buzz,” Sr. Rita told The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. “I think it’ll be nice just to get to know them, and show them that we are normal, and we love God. We want to share that with people.”
The sisters belong to the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, a teaching community in Nashville.
“They add an element that is irreplaceable,” the school’s principal, Sondra Morris, said. “I think for these young people to see the dedication and how they’ve given their life to God . . . and then they’re fabulous teachers.”
Making a splash
The York Daily Record in Pennsylvania wrote a delightful story about Sr. Judi Tarozzi and her twice-a-week-habit: Riding her motorized wheelchair to the local YWCA for water aerobics class.
It takes her about 20 minutes to get there, since the wheelchair only goes about 6 miles an hour. But the newspaper found that the journey is totally worth it for the retired grade-school principal, who cannot walk because of arthritis and several hip replacements that didn’t work.
“In the water, I can run, I can jump, I can do anything,” said Tarozzi, who lives with four other retired sisters at the Mercy Residence retirement home in York.
Because the building is too big for the small number of sisters left there, she and her colleagues are moving further away in the fall. She won’t be able to ride her wheelchair to the Y anymore, but she still plans to make the bus trip.
“It's just unbelievable how much the water helps me,” she said. “So I'm definitely going to continue.”
The scourge of Ebola
The Ebola virus has claimed the life of a woman religious from the Congo who was working in Liberia.
Sr. Chantal Pascaline died recently in the San Jose de Monrovia Hospital in Liberia, according to a report from The Associated Press.
Pascaline belonged to San Juan de Dios hospital order, a Spain-based Catholic humanitarian group that runs hospitals around the world.
More than 1,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to the latest statistics from the World Health Organization.
A bad sign of the times
We can’t stop shaking our head over this news from the posh and tony Hamptons in New York.
Media outlets from New York to London wrote about how residents in Southhampton objected to a street sign erected to honor a sister who was killed in a hit-and-run while visiting there in 2012.
Their objection?
The sign was too depressing for several of the town’s wealthy residents.
The blue sign said “Sister Jackie’s Way,” a memorial to Sr. Jacqueline Walsh, 59, who was attending an event at a Sisters of Mercy retreat house when she was struck and killed while out walking.
The sign stirred heated debate among the town’s residents when it went up last summer. In a survey of the residents on the road, nearly half said they wanted the sign gone.
London’s Daily Mail and other outlets this week reported that one prominent member of the community, John Carley, wrote a letter to town officials earlier this year complaining that “every time someone visits, I am forced to recount this tragedy because they ask who Sr. Jackie was. While I have no doubt Sr. Jackie was a wonderful person and deserves to be remembered by those who knew her, her tragic death while visiting us is not an event residents wish to recall.”
The town’s supervisor ordered the sign’s removal last month, but Southampton highway superintendent Alex Gregor, who put the $45 sign up, put it back up.
“Any time there is a little pushback from the rich, that’s it,” he told the New York Post. “If we don’t have a little humanity, what are we doing?”
Walsh’s colleagues, however, asked Gregor to take down the sign last week because its presence made them feel unwelcome in the town.
“They really choose to remember her in their daily prayer,” said a Sisters of Mercy spokeswoman in Merion Station, Penn.
Quote of the week
Veteran action star Babu Antony in India will play Jesus Christ in an upcoming movie, wearing costumes handmade by women religious in Kaipuzha, Kottayam.
According to The Times of India, the actor has discovered that many of the women are fans of his action flicks.
“I was pretty surprised that they love action movies and even told me about the actions sequences I have done, especially the jump kicks!” he said.
[Lisa Gutierrez is a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., who scans the non-NCR news every week for interesting pieces about sisters. She can be reached at lisa11gutierrez@gmail.com.]