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October
3, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 17Oakland,
CA
Nun is guardian angel to Romania’s poor
Last December, when the Burlingame Sisters of Mercy
presented Sister Mary Rose Christy with their annual Mercy Action Cunningham
award for outstanding ministry, the 82-year-old nun was delighted with
the honor.
But the former nurse-turned social worker was particularly grateful because
the award came with $5,000 — a windfall gift she could use to help
support ARAPAMESU, the umbrella social service agency she started 10 years
ago in the town of Sibiu, Romania.
ARAPAMESU sponsors an orphanage, a women’s cottage embroidery industry,
a youth trade school, a temporary work agency and numerous other programs
to lift people out of poverty and to keep families together.
The awards day would have been picture perfect if Sister Christy could
have delivered the check to her staff in person. But that wasn’t
possible, because for over a year, Sister Christy has been living at Mercy
Sisters Motherhouse in Burlingame while she receives care for a foot infection.
She is hoping to return to Romania by the end of this year.
Romania first captured her heart in 1991, when, with the Mercy community’s
blessings, Sister Christy traveled to the heart of Romania’s Transylvania
district. She was prompted to move there after seeing a television program
about the 100,000 children languishing in Romania’s 700 orphanages
and other institutions following the overthrow of communist dictator President
Nicolae Ceausescu.
Sister Christy teamed up with former British actress Angela Mason, who,
backed by the San Francisco Rotary Club, had started a project called
“Touch Romania.” In just five months, Mason had raised $60,000,
collected 26,000 pounds of clothing and was ready to adopt an institution.
Mason appointed Christy as Touch Romania’s on-site director, making
her the first American nun to enter the country to work.
When Touch Romania later became associated with Terre des Hommes, a Netherlands-based
social service agency, Sister Christy was appointed director of Riul Vadului
Hospital, a home for handicapped children and adults in Sibiu. Officially
her job was to “upgrade” the medical care at Riul Vadului
“The job description should have said, ‘start from scratch,’”
she said. There wasn’t any medical care. Nor decent food. The needs
were enormous.
So Sister Christy rolled up her sleeves to tackle this situation, head-on.
As a retired nurse, she readily saw the evidence of malnutrition and anemia
in the children. “What are you feeding them?” she asked the
cook. Whatever he could find at the market. Butter. Bread. Sometimes a
thin soup.
Sister Christy decided to solve this problem first. She would check out
the market for herself. She sleuthed around town, discovered a man with
a van and asked him if she could use it. He agreed to help her shop each
day for food. For the next three months, the two went shopping every day
and Sister Christy took over the cooking while the reorganization process
took hold.
As Sister Christy recalled, the Romanians staffing the hospital were so
accustomed to the chaos, disorganization, and lack of humaneness that
existed during the Communist regime that they had no idea how to care
for their charges. So Sister Christy, the Dutch organization and a large
bevy of American volunteers decided to model
for the staff how tasks should be done.
It didn’t take long to discover why there were so many orphans in
Romania. The economy was devastated. People couldn’t afford to keep
their children, so they turned them over to institutions.
Sister Christy’s response in 1995 was to create the Romanian-American
Association for the Promotion of Health, Education and Human Services
(ARAPAMESU) to enable families to keep their children through job training,
job creation, budgeting and education for women.
There are now 24 employees and numerous volunteers from around the world.
Support comes from donations and grants.
Programs have unfolded organically as needs have surfaced. For example,
when Sister Christy learned that many children dropped out of school by
the time they were 10 because their parents couldn’t afford to buy
supplies, she started her own elementary and high school, plus a job-training
center.
A few years ago, when a group of U.S. college students offered to volunteer
in her agency, Sister Christy asked them to bring her every piece of information
they could find about women’s issues, especially domestic violence,
a serious problem in Romania. She used the information to create a series
of educational radio shows.
ARAPAMESU also runs children’s summer activities, including an arts
day, camp, and has increased family awareness of budgeting, home and personal
health, and unemployment prevention.
When Sister Christy returns to Romania, she will have a staff meeting
at work the first day “to catch up in person,” although she
has stayed in close contact with her colleagues through faxes and e-mails.
She will be contacting old friends.
Sister Christy is anxious to find out how one of her grown-up orphans
is faring. When the young man, Dmitri, left Sister Christy’s orphanage
as an 18-year-old to become a house painter, he and Sister Christy kept
in close contact. “I fed him lunch a lot,” she said.
Sister Christy loves to tell about the time Dmitri invited her to his
wedding at a local Orthodox Church. Then he made a most unusual request.
He needed a wedding ring. Well, actually, he needed two —one for
his fiancée and one for himself. Could she find some?
So Sister Mary Rose Christy, who, throughout her years in Romania, had
tracked down a wide assortment of items, contacted some of her women friends
and rounded up the jewelry. The day of the wedding, though, Sister Christy
first went to the wrong church — there were two Orthodox churches
in town. “I arrived just in time to hand him the rings. I was a
real hero that day.”
For further information on how to help Sister Christy and ARAPAMESU, go
to the web site:www.arapamesu.org.
Mercy Sister Mary Rose Christy enjoys a walk with two
of the orphans she helps in Romania.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SISTER MARY ROSE CHRISTY
