On Christmas Eve in 1992, four women gathered to have a celebratory glass of wine around the Christmas tree. They were Catholic sisters, members of the Ursuline community, whose motto is Soli Deo Gloria, “For the Glory of God Alone.”

AIDS was still largely hidden in Youngstown, at least for most people. But Sr. Kathleen
Minchin and her three friends had all seen it. Two of the sisters were involved in parish work—one worked for the diocese as an advocate with the marriage tribunal, and Sr. Kathleen was a chaplain in a local hospital. In 1992 she had seen more than the disease. She had seen how those living with it were treated. A nurse once said to her, as if to protect her from the indignity of it all, “Oh, Sister, don’t go in that room. The woman in there has AIDS.”

Christmas is a time of celebration, a busy time filled with family, presents, and holiday meals, but also a time of reflection. As they enjoyed their impromptu celebration, their conversation settled on AIDS. And they asked themselves: “What should the Ursuline Sisters do?”

Into the Community

That was almost 15 years ago. Today, Sr. Kathleen and her colleagues Brigid Kennedy, Sr. Sue Durkin, and Sr. Susan Zion manage the Ursuline Sisters HIV/AIDS Ministry, a clinic providing comprehensive care services to men, women, and children. In the current fiscal year, the clinic anticipates that it will see 185 HIV-positive clients. One of those patients is a teenager named Jonay.

Jonay was very sick when she first came to the Ministry’s clinic at age 9, but today she is a
picture of life at 14. Jonay is on a twice-daily regimen of pills, taking her medication at 7 a.m. and at 6 p.m. “They make me feel sick sometimes,” she says, “but I can usually get them all down in just a couple of minutes.” Tall like an adult, but still thin like a child, she smiles broadly when you ask her about her favorite activity—cheerleading.

“When I grow up,” she says, all business for a moment, “I want to be a doctor, because they help people.” And then, 14 years old again, she interrupts herself:”. . . or maybe work in a nail salon. It’s so much fun to paint my nails!”

Jonay reflects the kind of victory that occurs frequently at the Ursuline Ministry. “After that Christmas Eve in 1992,” says Sr. Kathleen, “we decided to perform an informal audit of what was available to people living with HIV/AIDS in Youngstown. The only thing we found was a support group for gay men hosted at a local Presbyterian Church. The sisters and I thought we might learn something, so we called up and asked if we could visit. A week later, at the appointed hour, we went to the church basement and stood around talking to some very nice young men. As the time for the meeting to begin passed, one of them interrupted our conversation and said, ‘Ladies, we’re sorry for the delay in starting our support group, but we’re waiting for some nuns to show up’.”

By 1993, the Ursulines offered a drop-in center, distributing household and personal goods to people who had lost everything because of AIDS. In 1995, the Ministry added a monthly dinner and food pantry. By 1997, the group had become so large—and the children in the group so in need—that they launched a separate program called Just for Kids. Today, that program includes Casa Madre, a residential house so beloved by the children that they never want to leave. Their sentiments reflect that these women have always had their ears to the ground and their eyes wide open looking for need.

Becoming Students

“I could never have imagined that we would have come this far,” says a smiling Sr. Kathleen, and then Kennedy interjects that one reason they have come so far is that they have received so much help from others.

Kennedy is the Title III project director. “We started from scratch and were so quickly flooded with new patients,” she explains, “that we knew we needed help. I called every infectious disease provider within 80 miles of Youngstown and every fellowship program between Youngstown and Philadelphia looking for someone to see adult patients. I had no luck until I talked to Susan Hunt.”

Dr. Susan Hunt is medical director at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s 1,000-patient Pittsburgh AIDS Center for Treatment (PACT). She had the experience of building a practice that the Ursulines badly needed. “It was gratifying to have an opportunity to take what we had learned in Pittsburgh and help a new clinic develop,” says Hunt, who after her first visit to Youngstown was overcome by the feeling that strikes most people when they come in contact with the Ursuline Sisters: You simply want to be part of their light.

“Dr. Hunt ended up working for free for over a year. She saw her patients—and did so much more,” says Sr. Susan, the clinic’s director. When Hunt began volunteering in Youngstown, she brought the experience of an entire Pittsburgh-based team. She also brought support, encouraging the Ursulines to apply for a Title III Planning Grant in 2002, and helping them prepare their first Title III Early Intervention Services application for fiscal year 2003. And now it is the Ursuline staff who are offering lessons to others on how to provide care in their communities.

Becoming Teachers

“There are five or six things that we’ve learned that have worked for us, and probably three or four mistakes that I wouldn’t want to make again,” explains Kennedy. “We were hurt by not using CAREWare or an equivalent medical record system from the start, and we should have begun some of our third-party billing processes much sooner. We also quickly became long on service staff but short on administration. On the positive side,” she adds, “we believe that there is nothing we can’t learn to do, and if no one else is meeting a need, then we’d better learn to do it quickly.”

“To that I would add that we are only as good as every single staff person or clinician who comes in contact with our patients,” interjects Sr. Susan. “Staff won’t all ‘get it’ completely from the beginning, but they must have the potential for mission.”

“Another key for us,” adds Sr. Kathleen, “is that we like to think that we respond to persistent need. We constantly ask ourselves not only ‘Is this really a need?’ but ‘Is this really of God?’ While we can’t ever know for certain, we know that when something is of God, it brings dignity, compassion, and justice to all persons.”

“But for us,” says Sr. Susan, “being faith-based is not saving souls. Faith-based is who I am and why I am here. My faith tells me that God lives with the poor, the sick, the neglected. My work and the people I ‘serve’ bring me closer to God; that is a pure gift from them to me. But if you want God-talk . . . we say that God is in the details. If something is worth doing (and what we do certainly is), then it’s worth doing as well as we’d do it for a visiting dignitary or a member of our own family.”

“Finally—and let me say that some of this is unique to our situation—we were asked to fill a void when one hospital system defunded a small HIV clinic in a health care climate where no one else did anything at all for HIV/AIDS,” says Kennedy. “We established our clinic as a stand-alone, independent from budget and administrative control of a larger institution for which HIV/AIDS is just one piece of the pie. All we do is HIV/AIDS, and we have no competing demands that are unrelated to HIV/AIDS. And we held the bigger institutions’ feet to the fire before we got their help. But it is our responsibility to remind others that HIV/AIDS is their responsibility, too.”