Sisters Who Live for the Poor--and With Them

The front room of the Holy Cross Center in South-Central Los Angeles was alive with activity. Small children played near their parents, who waited quietly for their turn to ask one of the sisters for help--usually a bag of groceries or clothing.

In the back room, a group of women volunteers from the neighborhood sorted and hung clothes to be given away. In a pantry nearby, another woman took groceries from metal shelves and packed a bag for a client.

Holy Cross Center has become an active and visible haven in its neighborhood, where families live in poverty in the shadow of random street violence, barely six freeway exits south of City Hall. In the past year the center has given emergency groceries to more than 20,000 people. About two-thirds of those also received free secondhand clothing.

Helping Hand for the Poor

The center has purchased medicine for sick neighbors too poor to fill prescriptions and answered calls late at night to stop a man from beating his wife and children.

The brainchild of Father Bill Jansen, pastor at Holy Cross Catholic Church at South Main and 47th streets, the center has been operating on a regular basis for nearly three years, since Sisters Carol and Suzanne Snyder and Jeanne Ronzani moved to the neighborhood.

Father Bill, one of four priests at Holy Cross Church, decided shortly after joining the parish four years ago that a social service center was needed.

“We were just deluged with people who had needs,” he said. The needs were basic: food, clothing, medicine, shelter.

The parish boundaries run roughly from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on the north to Slauson Avenue on the south, and from Hoover Street on the west to Avalon Boulevard on the east. “Within this area, about one-third of the families live below the poverty level, infant mortality is high and crime is more than double that recorded for the rest of the city,” Sister Suzanne said.

Father Bill leased space for the center in a storefront across from the church, but during its first year, it was rarely open because it lacked staff, regular volunteers and direction.

Then in the spring of 1984, Sister Suzanne, a member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, heard about the center. She was working at a large community project in a barrio in Pacoima. The project, called Meet Each Need with Dignity (MEND), was founded and supported by six parishes in the San Fernando Valley. Sister Suzanne had been with the project eight years and felt that since it was firmly established, she was free to move to something else.

She told Father Bill that she would join Holy Cross Center, but with one proviso. She would bring others with her.

“I didn’t want to come and live and work alone,” she said. “My concept of a religious commitment is to live in a community.”

She asked her sister, Carol, a Franciscan nun, and Sister Jeanne, a member of the Holy Child order, to join her at Holy Cross. Both women had worked at MEND.

Being with the poor meant, for the nuns, living without a salary for their work at the center.

“From the beginning, the pastor was honest about it and said the parish was not in a financial position to make any kind of compensation,” Sister Suzanne noted. So the nuns figured other ways to finance their work.

Sister Jeanne, 43, decided to work full time as a math teacher at Our Lady of Loretto, a Catholic high school for girls. For that work, the school provides a small stipend, which helps cover the nuns’ household expenses.

Although Sister Jeanne is unable to work at Holy Cross Center each day, Sister Suzanne emphasizes that her support is invaluable to the work.

Kathleen Murray, 26, took Sister Carol’s place last summer, when Sister Carol moved to the Bay Area to help initiate a similar center. Murray is a candidate in the religious order of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

The nuns and Murray live in a modest one-story house two blocks from the center, which pays their $575 monthly rent.

Sense of Community

The center has helped build a sense of community, says Geri Silva, an organizer with the Equal Rights Congress, a minority advocacy group, which has a desk at Holy Cross Center.

“I have a lot of respect for these nuns,” she said. “They’re tough.”

Sister Suzanne, 50, and Murray run the center’s daily activities and spend as many afternoons as possible going to other parts of the county, talking to members of more affluent parishes, service groups and schools, and soliciting donations. They also publish a one-page newsletter each month in which they tell about the center, its activities and its needs.

In their first year, the nuns raised $25,000 for the center “by nickel and diming it,” Sister Suzanne said. This year, the total is $40,000.

It costs just over $3,300 a month to run the center. “We spend every penny we get,” she said. “And we could use more. We just found out that across-the-board federal cuts have reduced next year’s government grant from our $20,000 proposal to down to $10,000.”

For Sisters Suzanne and Murray, work begins at 9 a.m. each weekday in the two large rooms that house Holy Cross Center.

“We try to spend a little time talking to each person,” Sister Suzanne said. “In talking with them, you learn about other needs they have.”

The women find that many of the people who come to the center have had their utilities shut off. Others can’t afford to use utilities even if they have them. Many ask for blankets and sweaters, something the center never has enough of, Sister Suzanne said.

Sister Suzanne relates well to people of all ages and from any background. For example, on a chilly afternoon she had a lunch appointment at a service station about 10 blocks from the church. She met a woman there who sat on a plastic milk crate next to a shopping cart loaded with plastic bags of clothing, draped with a soiled quilt and topped by sheets of thin plastic.

Invited for a Burger

Sister Suzanne invited her to have a hamburger, and after being assured she could eat next to her belongings, the woman accepted.

The woman was bundled in a sweater and a knit cap. A few strands of gray hair peeked through the cap. Her blue slacks were soiled and a seam was deteriorating on one of the legs.

After several visits, Sister Suzanne had learned the woman’s name, Gwenda, and that her small income was earned by sweeping trash from the service station.

The woman chattered quickly, changing subjects often and unexpectedly. She asked Sister Suzanne what she thought about microwave ovens.

Sister Suzanne replied she doesn’t have a microwave and asked the woman where she spent nights. The woman said she stayed in a motel room that a wealthy friend reserved for her, but the nun knew from other nights when she had driven past the station that the woman sleeps huddled against her cart or on a nearby bus-top bench.

Keeping Dry in Rain

The woman pointed to the thin plastic sheet on top of her cart.

“You know, five of these won’t keep you dry in the rain,” she said.

As sister Suzanne finished her hamburger and prepared to leave, the woman asked for her phone number. Sister Suzanne wrote the number for Holy Cross Center on a paper napkin. Then she headed back to the church.

“I try to be present for Gwenda,” Sister Suzanne said. “It’s important for her to know she has a friend. And there are many other ways we need to help people. That’s why we have Holy Cross Center.”