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Against
All Odds
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By
Mary
Ann Hellinghausen For nine years, Sister Mary Rose Christy, RN, has been looking out for the health of the Romanian people. And as economic conditions in the region worsen, she thinks the country’s pulse is weakening. Although many of the country’s notorious orphanages have improved since the early 1990s when Christy and others came to Romania to work for better conditions, the plight of many families has worsened as the economy has deteriorated. “Economically, the country’s in very bad shape and about ready to go over the brink,” she said. “The healthcare system has completely broken down. It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen.” Many factories have closed, leaving workers without jobs. Because families are having a hard time feeding their children, thousands are being abandoned to orphanages or to the streets, she said. Furthermore, she sees more instances of alcoholism and spousal abuse. Broadening her scope Christy, a Catholic nun with the Sisters of Mercy in Burlingame, lives in Sibiu, Transylvania, a cultural center of about 300,000 in central Romania. Although she initially went to Romania to work in orphanages, she has changed her emphasis to working with families to keep children in their homes and improve family life.
“The people there are profoundly depressed,” said Sister Mary Peter McCusker, RN, a Sisters of Mercy nun who has accompanied Christy to Romania in the past. “What I see her doing is empowering the local people—giving them the tools and helping them find the resources to develop their own gifts." Nursing at the core Christy was licensed as a nurse in 1945 in Pittsburgh, and joined the Sisters of Mercy after moving to San Francisco in 1946. The order of nuns, whose mission centers on helping poor women and children, was founded in Ireland in 1831 and now has 15,000 sisters worldwide. The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, part of the worldwide order, has more than 6,000 nuns working in North, South, and Central America as well as the Caribbean, Guam, and the Philippines. The order sponsors nearly 200 healthcare facilities, as well as schools, colleges, and universities. Christy, who says she identified the need and wanted to go to Romania, is the only Sisters of Mercy nun working in the country. Her nursing training has proved invaluable, and not merely in a clinical sense. “As a nurse, I was taught to note and record symptoms," Christy said. “I find it is a nursing skill I still use. We keep seeing these same problems as their symptoms, and I want to know the cause. I find my nursing skills to be extremely important." Every two years, Christy comes home to California to try to raise the $100,000 she needs each year to run her Romanian programs. With the exception of a few grants, the Sisters of Mercy do not underwrite Christy’s work, forcing her into the role of fund-raiser. Christy pieces together the funding through a combination of grants, donations from the public, and appeals to American companies doing business in Romania—a segment she believes has a particular obligation to help the struggling country. “I want to challenge the businesses in Romania to help develop the country," she said. Retire at 76? Don’t talk to the indefatigable Christy about retiring. “It never dawned on me that I was old—I’m only 76," she said. Eventually, she hopes to turn the association over to its Romanian staff and concentrate her efforts on creating an endowment to assure that the association’s work continues. McCusker, a parish nurse at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in San Jose, believes Christy’s work will have a ripple effect throughout the country. “She has trained workers to care for other people, and now she is training more educated members of that society to care for others," she said. “When you work through the leadership of the country, there is the potential to change the country, and I have no doubt that is what she’s doing." |
Christy
provides shelter for battered women, counseling, and job training
through the Romanian-American Association for the Promotion of Health,
Education, and Human Services, an agency she founded staffed primarily
by Romanians she has trained. She also has developed a program that
sends skilled volunteers to assist property owners who can’t
afford their labor as well as programs for children to keep them off
the streets. Besides all this, she started a television program and
newspaper column dedicated to teaching about domestic violence. Eventually
she hopes to open a medical clinic for preventive health care.