Published June 6, 2003
Quest brings sister to Anchorage from Ethiopia; is Russia next?
For the last 11 years, Polish Daughter of Charity Sister Maria Stec has been counseling Ethiopian teenagers on matters of faith, sexuality and human development at a Catholic school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Over the last year, in the city whose name means "new flower" she discerned a call to turn over a new leaf and join what she hopes will become the first community of Daughters of Charity in Magadan, Russia.
The new community, if it gets the green light from the order’s leadership team, would operate through Magadan’s sole Catholic parish, Church of the Nativity of Jesus, started by retired Anchorage Archbishop Francis Hurley in 1991.
Sister Stec’s quest brought her from Addis Ababa to Anchorage in April. She now lives with three other Daughters of Charity, including Sister Jean Marie Williams, another Russian speaker who also has pledged to be part of a Magadan community if it materializes. Sister Williams works at the Russian Desk, which coordinates the archdiocese’s Magadan mission.
Sisters Stec and Williams are scheduled to depart June 13 on a two-week "needs assessment" trip to Magadan to investigate the logistics of transplanting four Daughters of Charity to serve the people in the Russian Far East city.
"How much would it take to live there? What kind of job possibilities could we get? Who are the poor?" are some of the questions Sister Williams said they will try to address while detailing the "nuts and bolts" of living in Magadan.
She said the trip will be a more focused follow-up of the weeklong visit she and the head of the order’s Western Province made to Magadan in April. Their findings will be formally presented to the Daughters of Charity leadership at the beginning of July.
The final decision on Magadan will be up to the new Superioress General of the international community, who is slated to be elected June 9.
Meanwhile the Anchorage pair are brushing up on their Russian with a tutor three days a week.
Sister Stec calls Sister Williams a "svezda," or "star," because she’s probably one of the only American Daughters of Charity who speaks Russian. Sister Stec, born near Warsaw, studied four years of Russian in high school.
"I love Russian language," she said, for the way it conveys "great music, great poetry, great literature."
As a teen-ager, she said, she devoured books written by Russian authors Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. "In original language, it was so beautiful," she said.
She’s never been to Russia and said that while her understanding of the language and Russian history may inform her quest to serve the people of Magadan, she will probably draw more from over a decade of experience at the 1,050-student school in Ethiopia.
"In Ethiopia, I received so much more than I gave. Ethiopians taught me to have respect for the person, respect for the human being and to be ready to listen," Sister Stec said.
She learned patience from the students she said, who always gave her a "good laugh," and she remembers with a glowing grin that when her youngsters were joyful, a high-pitched trill or "ilil" would erupt from a group.
"Ethiopia taught me that I am just … on a journey," Sister Stec said. "I’ve met so many wonderful people who help me — the hospitality of the culture, the beauty of the culture and the tremendous suffering that I still see when I go to bed and I close my eyes. It’s part of me I cannot pass by quickly," she said.
Sister Stec was one of two Daughters of Charity and 35 teachers who educated Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox and Muslim children at St. Mary school in the country’s capital city.
She has respect for the Ethiopian Orthodox church, the dominant religion there.
Her familiarity with Orthodoxy will also benefit her in Russia, where a majority of the people are Russian Orthodox.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches "for me are two lungs," Sister Stec said.
The Polish sister is also aware of Magadan’s dark history emanating from the slave labor camps Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin built there in the 1930s.
Sister Stec corresponds with Stanislaw Kowalski, a Polish survivor of the Magadan gulags, who has authored books memorializing the experience of millions who died and the few that survived.
"Kolyma," the name for the Far East Russian region that includes Magadan, was synonymous with death, Kowalski wrote. Sister Stec said her fellow Pole’s e-mails lend insight into the suffering of survivors still living in the region, some of whom are Church of the Nativity parishioners.
"To go to Magadan for me will be like entering holy ground of martyrs — emotionally overpowering. To be able to listen to what the people have to say, that will be my beginning," she said.
The Daughters of Charity strive to serve the "poorest of the poor" regardless of religious origin, Sister Stec said.
If the sisters are able to minister to the people in Magadan, a city wrought with alcoholism and unemployment, she hopes the unbiased outreach efforts will sew good will between the two Christian groups.
In Magadan, Sisters Stec and Williams will be occupied with more immediate concerns.
Sister Williams said if the temperature stays above freezing, she’s ready to plant potatoes in the parish garden that feeds people in the winter
Sister Stec is confident about the the possibilities. "I love people ... so only weather can beat me."