Cabrini Mission Corps: Community and faith in action
(Originally Appeared in the Catholic Standard and Times)

By NADIA POZO
CS&T Staff Writer

By the world’s standards, you’re on your way to success. But, for some reason, you still don’t feel fulfilled and the feeling just gnaws at you. What do you do?

Gina Pultorak, the new director of the Cabrini Mission Corps in Radnor, Pa., struggled with that feeling after three successful years in consulting work.

“My desire to do mission work developed when my faith matured and I came to understand what life was about,” she said. “I struggled a bit, and prayed about how I’d respond to this call.”

Pultorak realized that she is called as a Catholic to live her faith in action, and discerned that this meant serving others through mission work. She spent two-and-a-half years working for the Church in the Dominican Republic before returning to the States. Now she serves others with the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — the Cabrini Sisters — as the lay director of their mission program.

Pultorak was hired to build up the corps in Philadelphia and surrounding states. She’s hoping Philadelphians will be inspired by the lay missionaries in this story and give her a call.

Pultorak connects lay people like herself, who find themselves at spiritual crossroads and who are discerning how they will live out their unique calling. She provides them with information about the Sisters and the opportunities they offer to lay people through their many ministries — opportunities that promise to enrich and deepen one’s faith.

Lay men and women have an opportunity to make a difference right here in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia or in one of the 16 countries where the sisters work.They also have the rare opportunity to live in community with the missionary Sisters for the year or two they commit to mission work.

That was what drew Carla Rosckes, who is currently a missioner with the Cabrini Mission Corps in Chicago, Ill.

“I had been reading a book called ‘The Hidden Lives of Nuns,’ which demolished every stereotype I had about nuns,” Rosckes said. “I thought the opportunity to live with the sisters would be a great experience, and a way to learn more about this ‘hidden’ vocation.”

Rosckes has enjoyed working side-by-side with the Sisters, and sharing their community life of meals, praying and activities — a life that is much like a family’s — and at the same time, she’s learned much about Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the foundress of the order and the first canonized American saint, who was named patroness of immigrants in 1950.

Rosckes discovered that Mother Cabrini was an Italian sister who was sent by Pope Leo XIII to the United States in the late 1800s, to care for the Italian immigrants who, at the time, were arriving in droves and experiencing discrimination and hardships because of their language and their Catholic faith.

The charism of helping immigrants, the poor, and those most in need continues today in the work of 1,300 Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Among Mother Cabrini’s many near-impossible feats was opening four great hospitals: One operates in New York City, the Cabrini Medical Center, which still cares for poor patients; one operates in Seattle, and two more are still running in Chicago.

Rosckes serves in one of the outreach programs affiliated with St. Anthony’s Hospital in Chicago, a non-profit teaching hospital that Mother Cabrini and her sisters ran for some time.

There, under Project Hope, Rosckes helps facilitate and lead health education classes, creative writing classes and other services for the immigrant Mexican community of Chicago’s west and south sides.

Since the Cabrini Mission Corps sent out its first seven missionaries in 1992 — they included a married couple — 100 more men and women have gone through the program, working in the United States and internationally with the missionary Sisters in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, England, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Spain and Swaziland.

Cabrini missionaries have served the homeless, tutored children after-school, planted gardens, taught English and ESL (English as a Second Language), served in the AIDS ministry, worked with refugees, started a parish center for clothing distribution, worked as nurses in clinics, done prison ministry, served the homebound elderly and those in nursing homes, provided hospitality and pastoral care, worked with special-needs children, and ministered through many other services, while providing a loving presence to those in need.

Ultimately, the work of the Sisters, and any missioner who works with them, is to bring Christ’s love to the world.

“The Cabrini spirituality is a Sacred Heart spirituality,” Pultorak said. “The mission of the Sisters is to be bearers of the love of Christ in the world, and to do it by working with those who most need it. Their ministry stresses presence [which means] the dignity of a person is more important than a project. That’s why hospitality is a key charism.”

The work takes courage, said Sister Bernadette Anello, M.S.C., the president of Cabrini Mission Foundation in New York City.

Sister Bernadette has been connected with the Cabrini Mission Corps since its beginning, having served as a member of the C.M.C. Advisory Board and having lived with, and been a liaison to, many CMC missionaries in the U.S. and abroad. From lifelong experience — she was taught by the Sisters in early childhood — Sister Bernadette has a lived experience of the Cabrini charism.

“Our mission concept is to go where there is a need. Our charism is steeped in the heart of Jesus” she said. “It is one of courage, and knowing that all people are our brothers and sisters. … Flexibility has to be a hallmark. It’s what we call in Italian ‘Disponibilidá’ which means to be available —to be ready to be sent. Can you be open to whatever the need is? We are looking for that generosity of spirit.”

If you feel called to serve others through the Cabrini Mission Corps, in a community in Philadelphia, or elsewhere in the U.S. or the world, visit www.cabrini-missioncorps.org or contact Gina Pultorak at (610) 971-0821.

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