Bishop Forces Out Beloved Nun

No place in California, save for the borderlands of Imperial, is poorer than this place. Like the fields, despair runs clear to the horizon.

So it comes as no surprise that residents approach the cluster of buildings on the north side of Visalia -- a refuge known as the Good News Center -- as if it were hallowed ground. For years, a small relentless nun with the unusual name of Sister Kenneth Quinn has performed what the down-and-out here consider miracles.

The center, built by the sister and a community of patrons and staffed by a small army of employees and volunteers, is a one-stop mall for the afflicted. Here, the hungry are fed, the tattered are clothed, the sick are mended, the aggrieved are given a lawyer and the homeless provided a bed.

Residents have long wondered what life would be like when the sister passed away. They had promised to carry on in her name and continue the mission of the local Daughters of Charity Order. What they never imagined is that the woman regarded as the “Mother Teresa of the San Joaquin Valley,” alive and kicking at age 65, would be booted from the very place she built.

And yet it happened this summer, in the heat of a tiff with Bishop John T. Steinbock, head of the Diocese of Fresno.

After years of taking a hands-off approach to the Good News Center, Bishop Steinbock decided to change course a few weeks ago. Steinbock and the local Catholic Charities demanded a say-so in the center’s budget, a level of oversight that the sister found demeaning.

She has now packed her belongings and left the center for good, declaring that her vow of obedience gives her no choice but to accept the bishop’s decision to fire her.

But the community of Visalia has taken no such vow. In the last week, many staff and volunteers have decided to follow her out the door, throwing the future of the center -- the only place of its kind in this sprawling farm belt -- in doubt.

“This whole thing is about politics, and the sister has no patience for politics,” said Pete Moreno, the center’s maintenance man and driver. “We had a good thing going and, like they say, ‘If it isn’t broke, why fix it?’

“Now everything’s gone crazy and a lot of us are quitting. She asked us not to, but how can we stay?”

Before she left, Sister Kenneth made one final try at holding on. She proposed to cut the center’s last ties to Catholic Charities and cast its lot with the western headquarters of the Daughters of Charity. The bishop, though, refused to give up the reins.

Steinbock wrote a lengthy letter to the Good News Center’s staff, volunteers and patrons, underscoring that the center belonged to his diocese and detailing Sister Kenneth’s insubordination. He said he had no choice but to remove the sister and two of her fellow nuns.

“This was tragic for everyone involved,” wrote the bishop, who has since declined to comment. “The sisters will be missed greatly, but our work for the poor must continue.”

Visalia Mayor Jesus J. Gamboa and the City Council are urging both sides to declare a six-month “cooling-off period” in the hope that Sister Kenneth might be allowed to return. Last week, 75 of her supporters drove to the bishop’s house in Fresno and protested for an hour, chanting, “S.O.S.! Save Our Sister!” Their cries fell on deaf ears. The bishop, neighbors said, was gone on a long-due vacation.

“He’s being intractable,” said Bob Felts, a longtime Visalia attorney who’s donated thousands of hours of legal work to the center. “The bishop isn’t thinking of the best interests of the poor. What it comes down to is a personality conflict between him and the sister.”

Poorest in State

Year after year, the numbers hardly change: The jobless rate in Tulare County stays stuck at 17% while nearly a third of the population lives in poverty. This county ranks as the No. 2 farm producer in the nation -- and the No. 1 producer of milk -- yet more poor people report fighting hunger here -- 47% -- than in any other county in California.

It’s not as if farmers are unwilling to help, Sister Kenneth says. They simply needed a network of gleaners willing to pick up their culls and deliver them to the poor. That’s where the sister and her band of hardy volunteers stepped in.

The middle child of a big Irish family in Chicago, she followed the path of two older sisters who joined the Daughters of Charity. Arriving in Visalia in 1981 after a stint at a children’s home in Rosemead, she began working with Sister Ursula Peternel, a beloved nun who became her mentor.

“There was no homeless shelter, no soup kitchen, no health clinic, no thrift store, no immigration office. Nothing,” she recalled.

They found an abandoned restaurant on the outskirts of Visalia, scrubbed it to a sparkle and placed flowers on each table. When no one showed up that first day for lunch, the sisters walked door to door in the barrio. “This place is for you” they told residents. One by one, they began to show up -- farm workers idled by winter, homeless men and women, families and the mentally ill.

“It kept growing and growing. We moved in 1987 to the present spot and added a thrift store, a warehouse, a kitchen,” she said. “Out of a little trailer, we opened a health clinic.”

The former bishop, Father Joseph Madera, had no qualms about handing over control to Sister Kenneth. With his blessing, she took a Catholic-based endeavor and turned it into a community-wide project involving churches of every stripe. Catholic Charities in Fresno likewise extended its organizational umbrella to the center -- no strings attached.

“I urged the center to incorporate 15 years ago and formally cut its ties to Catholic Charities because it really was an ecumenical operation,” Felts said. “But our board decided not to do it. They wanted to continue to work in harmony with Catholic Charities and the bishop.”

Then Steinbock took over. He believed the Good News Center, even though its funding came from the community and the Daughters of Charity, had never stopped being an arm of Catholic Charities, his spokesman said. He wanted the center’s $350,000 budget cleared and handled through Catholic Charities, an agency he oversees.

It was a move the sister found unacceptable, and she didn’t mince words: Never.

“We weren’t looking to take over. We were looking for some more accountability,” said Philip Traynor, executive director of Catholic Charities in Fresno and a spokesman for Steinbock. “Sister Kenneth has done some great work but she put her foot down on this. It was either her way or no way. The ministry is bigger than one person.”

Steinbock is the same bishop, critics say, who showed unusual tolerance by waiting several years to take action against a priest who confessed to repeatedly molesting teenage girls. In a recent court case, the bishop testified that only after the priest admitted molesting six more teenagers in 1990 did he remove him from the youth ministry.

“How can you sit on a case involving a pedophile and by the fell swoop of a pen eliminate a lady who has worked 25 years to assist the poor?” Felts asked. “I don’t know how else to say it.”

Her supporters acknowledge that Sister Kenneth regards the Good News Center with a proprietary air. They say she can be blunt if she perceives someone standing in the way of what she considers the best interests of the poor. By the end, they say, Steinbock had become just such an obstacle.

Bishop Is ‘Boss’

The bishop’s supporters, on the other hand, say the real problem was the cult of personality surrounding Sister Kenneth. “She may have done a lot of good work but he’s still the boss. He’s still the bishop,” said one supporter.

On a late afternoon last week, staff members at the center gazed out to a parking lot with half as many cars as the week before. Even the poor were staying away in protest, they said.

Frank Lopez, fresh from Delano State Prison after serving a drug sentence, said he had no place to go and landed here with his wife and 7-year-old son. With the help of the center, he’s found a job making fruit bins, and he’s working to stay clean. “Without this place, I’d be on the streets,” he said.

Rita Perez, the center’s head cook who makes from scratch 300 enchiladas and a soup that “has everything in it but the kitchen sink,” believes the sister is coming back.

“I know it,” she said. “God. Prayer. If he can move mountains, he can bring her back.”

But Sister Kenneth says she and her fellow nuns -- Sister Caridad Tatayon and 85-year-old Sister Baptista Casper -- are preparing to leave their mountain cottage beside the river and move to Northern California for a new assignment.

“It’s going to be so hard to leave, we so love this place. But that’s the way it has to be,” she said. “People are upset over how I was treated, but they need to get past that and move on. Our story, the sisters’ story, is over. Now it’s the story of the people of Visalia. They will go on, and the work will continue.”