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Thursday, October 03, 2002

By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The sisters in their traditional black habits had come from around the globe to the motherhouse of Mount St. Macrina Monastery in Uniontown. They listened respectfully as Mercy Sister Mary Pat Garvin spoke to them about the qualities of leadership necessary to lead a community of nuns.

	Sister Anna Piecunko, left, talks with Sister Maria Rozmarynowycz during a break yesterday in a meeting of the Sisters of St. Basil the Great at the motherhouse of Mount St. Macrina Monastery in Uniontown. About 20 superiors from four continents came together for a meeting of the international leadership of the Eastern Catholic order. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

An international authority on the psychology of religious life, Sister Mary Pat talked of authority that is built on loving relationships with God and with the sisters of the community. Monastic life will not always be heaven on earth, she told the nuns, and love and forbearance are necessary if they are to offer hope to a broken world.

Many of those in her audience know that from long experience, having joined the order of the Sisters of St. Basil the Great in secret and lived underground in communist Eastern Europe.

About 20 superiors from four continents are gathered in Uniontown for a meeting of the international leadership of the Eastern Catholic order founded in the fourth century. During their two-week meeting, the sisters will travel not only to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but to Washington, D.C., and to Ground Zero in New York City. The order is the oldest in the world and this is its first meeting outside Europe.

The community came to the United States from Ukraine in 1911 and dedicated the Uniontown mon-astery in 1934. Mount St. Macrina may be best known for its annual Labor Day pilgrimage for Byzantine Catholics, but it houses ministries ranging from an iconography studio to a home for women recovering from addictions.

While the average age of the 87 sisters in the Uniontown Province is about 75, many of the nuns from overseas were half that age. Sister Marhareta Hutnyk, the provincial superior of Lviv, Ukraine, the order's largest province, is 36. As a child she witnessed the faith that moved her parents to take the enormous risk of hosting secret Masses behind closed curtains in their home. She received her instruction in the faith from three sisters who lived clandestinely in a nearby home and worked regular jobs to support themselves. When she received her first communion, she somehow knew she was called to serve God as a Basilian Sister.

When she joined the community in 1983, "never did anyone dream there would be freedom. But we had a very strong faith," she said.

After the order emerged from underground in 1990, the sisters persuaded the government to return two monasteries to the nuns in Lviv and Ivano Franksisk.

"That's when the problems began. These buildings were ruined. They were uninhabitable," she said. "When we lived underground, whatever money we earned was sufficient. We only had to support ourselves. We did not have to support buildings."

The buildings have been put to good use. The monastery in Ivano Franksisk is 90 percent renovated and houses a catechetical academy in which 120 young women are learning to teach the faith to others. The sisters have just opened a day school for children. And 22 of the 187 sisters are novices, with seven more on the verge of entering.

The order is also growing in Slovakia, where the province was founded in 1945. In 1950, the Czechoslovakian government forced the sisters to move out of the heavily Catholic Slovak region and into an Orthodox area. The sisters were not split up but were forced to work in a government nursing home for women.

"They were able to live within the building with relative spiritual freedom, but they were always watched by the government," said Sister Emelia Turcanikova, 49, the provincial superior who joined the order in 1970.

When they were given their freedom in 1989 the sisters returned to Secovce, Slovakia, where they began to teach religion in the schools.

"It was very difficult, because the communists had instilled a very negative attitude toward religion. But it was very easy to work with the young children because they were learning for the first time," Sister Emelia said.

The province has grown from 16 to 25 sisters. They offer retreats, Bible studies, prayer groups and youth festivals, and they organize children to visit the sick and elderly. In 1995, with help from the bishop, they opened a high school that now has 124 students.

"The youth are now very open to hear about God," she said.

Sister Marcela Runcan, 33, is the youngest superior at the meeting. Her entry into the order at 15 was so secret that her own father didn't know she was a sister until 1990, when he saw her wearing a habit. There were about 30 sisters when the community emerged from underground. Today there are 49, plus three novices.

Sister Marcela's dream when she joined the order was to open an orphanage as an alternative to Romania's notorious government warehouses for abandoned babies. That proved financially impossible, but the sisters run a kindergarten, teach religion in the public schools and operate a small retreat house that was built with contributions from U.S. parishes. They run a maternal health clinic with obstetrics, gynecological care, prenatal counseling and assistance to unwed mothers. They have plans to open a home for the elderly, if they can raise the money.

The people of Romania are hungry for God, she said. "Every day many people come to our door to ask our advice and ask our prayers for their problems," she said.