Help through counseling brings one woman's life from darkness to light. Sister Patty Fillenwarth and her ministry at Providence Family Services in Chicago help real people who have nowhere else to turn to transform themselves.
Sisters Patty Wallace, Beth Wright, Laura Parker and Deborah Cambell made lifelong commitments as Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods on June 30, 2013.
“To me it was sort of like coming home or something. It was not a scary thing, it just felt right,” Sister Patty Fillenwarth said of her call to religious life.
Download Sister stories – Sister Rebecca Keller Rebecca “Becky” Keller was in her mid-20s. She had graduated from Purdue University and was teaching elementary school. Yet an idea remained with her that she couldn’t shake. She knew little about…
(This article originally published in the Summer 2013 edition of HOPE) The first time I went to Mass with the Sisters of Providence in the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, it rattled me. Those sisters were changing…
(This article was originally printed in the Summer 2013 edition of HOPE.) “To me home is one’s rootedness. Saint Mary-of-the-Woods is my rootedness as a Sister of Providence. When I reached retirement time, Saint Mary’s was where I wanted to…
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all…
Several years ago David Franklin of West Terre Haute was in the local IGA. He had only $15, and he was having trouble covering the groceries he needed. He recalls a Sister of Providence, whose name he no longer remembers,…
“I think hope dominates the feeling of depression. I think hope was very high at first. But perhaps it was an unrealistic hope: a failure to recognize that the work of any council takes years and perhaps generations to accomplish,” she said.
Click here to read the National Catholic Rural Life Conference’s coverage of Providence in the Desert’s ministry to Mexican immigrants in rural Coachella, Calif.