This is an excerpt from “Events in Latin America: Chile, Dominican Republic, Peru” from The Northeast Province of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, 1973-1989, one in a series of books on the history of what was then the Wilton Province, written by Sister Kay O’Connell, SSND.
Early in December 1981, the regional council – Sisters Rosemarie, Bernardine, and Dorothy Mary – met with all the sisters in Puerto Rico to discern the question of whether God was calling the region to a mission outreach in the Dominican Republic. After much prayer and dialogue, consensus was reached on a positive answer.
Along with Japan’s going to Nepal around this time, and Guam to the island of Yap in Micronesia, Puerto Rico’s outreach to Bánica was deeply moving to the delegates when it was described at the 1982 General Chapter. It seemed to many that the smaller units, the regions in the congregation, were leading the way in the spirit of Mother Theresa, who gave not out of abundance but out of her meager resources.
In the summer of 1982, Sisters Rosemarie González, Milagros Esteban, Maria Antonia Flores and Marilyn Ortiz went to the small town of Bánica, close to the Haitian border, to become familiar with its culture, needs, and apostolic possibilities. The following summer, 1983, Milagros returned with Socorro (Socky) García, Mercedes Rosado, and Lillian Corriveau. These last three were to be pioneers in Bánica, but this decision was still in discernment in the region that summer. Sisters Rosemarie and Maria Eugenia Ortiz, the new regional council, announced it in a letter to Bishop Connors dated November 29, 1983.
The new mission, San Francisco de Asis, was opened by Lily, Socky, and Mercedes on September 3, 1984. After an early liturgy at the Villa in Puerto Rico the previous day, they departed, accompanied by Rosemarie and Kay O’Connell. The first evening, they had supper with Bishop Ronald (Reinaldo) Connors, CSsR, in San Juan de la Maguana, a Redemptorist mission, where they also visited with Father Arthur Donnelly, brother of Wilton’s Sisters Alice Marie and Gertrudis. “Padre Arturo” was a favorite Redemptorist of all the sisters who had known him in Puerto Rico during his many years there. The missionaries’ first night was spent with the Carmelitas Teresas de San José, a community of cloistered sisters in San Juan de la Maguana.
The next day, in a truck driven by their new pastor, Father Gary J. Crevier from Green Bay, Wisconsin, they began the two-hour trip upcountry to Bánica, arriving in the afternoon to be welcomed by the women of the town who were busy preparing dinner at the small convent. Kay remembers how their worn faces lit up when they saw the sisters, and their heartfelt hugs and kisses. The next day was spent walking around the very poor town and dusty, crumbling plaza, and greeting friends from the previous summer, the children especially. At the time, Bánica was a town of 15,000, six hours from the capital, within walking distance of the Haitian border. Being so far away from the capital, its people felt neglected by their government and somewhat by the Church, since they did not have a resident pastor.
At the parish house in the town of Elias Piña, a distance away, the sisters had dinner the following day with Father Gary, who was a diocesan priest and pastor of this largely rural area, which also included the town of Pedro Santana. With him was another American, Father Bill Hoffman. Lola, Conchita and Isabel, lay women from Spain fondly called “españolas” and “señoritas,” did pastoral work and ran a clinic in the Elias Pina parish of St. Teresa. They took Kay back to Santo Domingo for her flight to the States.
For the first few months, the three missionaries had a housekeeper and cook named Ginita, who lived with them until they became better acquainted with the town and the customs of the people. One of the realities that they quickly became aware of was that St. Francis and Jesus were intermingled in the popular religion of Bánica. For their first experience of the Feast of St. Francis on October 4, just a month after their arrival, Bishop Connors came to stay with them.
The previous year, on the night before October 4, Father Gary had been forced to empty and lock the Church at 1:30 am to prevent further bloodshed from a fight that had broken out inside. People had insisted – against his wishes, because of previous abuses – on staying there for the all-night vigil that was their custom. Father Gary described the scene as a “bar room atmosphere.” Bishop Connors came to talk with the people on the following December 5, with Father Gary and the lay missionaries present. Before that meeting, Sister Gary had written to Sister Rosemarie that “Perhaps some kind of public penance needs to be scheduled before the Church will be blessed again with great solemnity to emphasize the sacredness of God’s temple, which has far greater preference over popular devotion or tradition.”
For the missionaries’ first celebration of the St. Francis feast, the Mass and fiesta at the Church passed devotionally, and the next day they climbed a nearby mountain in procession to the cave in which the people believed Francis had been born. Very primitive icons, made by hand, expressed the petitions for which they were praying.
For the two years that the three were together in Bánica, very gradually – Lily by her preaching, Mercedes with her guitar, Socky with her ability to deal with any situation that presented itself, and all of them with prayer – began to catechize. They made a conscious decision to look to the future and concentrate especially on the children and teenagers. Jesus’ command to love and forgive one’s enemies, the sisters found, was impossible for the men and boys of Bánica to accept; when asked, the women and girls rejected “an eye for an eye” verbally, but thought Jesus’ teaching impossible to live.
The sisters also found that people had to travel to Elias Piña to get the simplest medications, only to find sometimes they were not available there, so they had to seek them further on. The three new missionaries came to a consensus that they would go to the capital each month to bring back supplies for a pharmacy that Mercedes took charge of in Bánica. She trained a layman for this ministry, as well.
After two years together, the little team of missionaries was broken up when Socky was elected to the regional council in Puerto Rico. Sister Rosemarie González then came to Bánica, a ministry she had long desired, and Lily went to the nearby town of Pedro Santana, whose people had requested her presence when they saw the good that was happening in Bánica. This was a change of heart – very early on, stones had been thrown at Mercedes and Socky when they went there to see if the townspeople wanted help.
During her two years in Bánica, Rosemarie worked with the youth group of the parish to establish the Biblioteca Madre Teresa de Jesus. There had been a library in town, but it had closed for lack of books. When the sisters asked the young people what they saw as their greatest need, they mentioned a library. With donations of money and books from Puerto Rico, permission to use part of the municipal building, some furniture from the former library, and a great deal of hard work by the youth group, the Mother Theresa Library became a reality.
Using a simplified Dewey Decimal system worked out by Sister Dorothy Kosarko in Puerto Rico, the students cataloged and labeled the books, some of them multiple copies of textbooks that were lacking in their school. Rosemarie then invited the teachers to give homework assignments from these texts and established a special section for teachers so they could take materials to their classrooms. The library was so well-used after school hours that an extension had to be set up in the school for evening study hours; students and adults took naturally to the necessary quiet. Rosemarie taught one of the mothers to manage the library, which she did for many years. An excellent reproduction of a portrait of Madre Teresa de Jesus, and the SSND mission and ministry statements from You Are Sent, flanked the outside door of the library. Both murals were the work of a local artist.
