Religious institute of diocesan rite has preached the Gospel in Detroit, Nigeria through personal, one-to-one connections
DETROIT — Seventy-five years ago, the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, set out on their mission of going door to door to tell everybody about the Catholic Church.
Known for their distinctive blue dress and walking two-by-two throughout the neighborhood, the Home Visitors of Mary played a unique role in visiting Catholics and non-Catholics, the faithful and the lapsed, and just about anybody who would answer the door about the Catholic Church’s presence in the area.
Well before the “new evangelization” was in common parlance in the Church, the sisters were ahead of the curve, going out and preaching to the community, said Sr. Clare Emeroum, HVM, the community's superior.
“The Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary is a congregation founded here in the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1949, started by Sr. Mary Schutz, HVM, and co-founded by Sr. Mary Agnes McInnis, HVM,” Sr. Emeroum told Detroit Catholic. “We started when there were many migrants coming to America and new people coming to Detroit, and the sisters would visit them and bring them to the Church and introduce them to God and pastoral ministry.”
The Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, will celebrate their 75th anniversary with Mass celebrated by retired Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Donald F. Hanchon at 11 a.m. Nov. 16 at Sacred Heart Parish in Detroit, a church that played an important part of the Home Visitors' mission in its early days, back when the parish was known as St. Peter Claver.
The Home Visitors of Mary are religious institute of diocesan rite (as opposed to pontifical rite) under the authority of the archbishop of Detroit.
Srs. Schutz and McInnis co-founded the institute with Msgr. John Ryan, director of religious education in the Archdiocese of Detroit, who saw the Home Visitors of Mary as a way to reach out the growing African-American community that was moving into Detroit from the American South and were unfamiliar with the Catholic Church.
“The Church was looking for missionary activities to introduce the Catholic Church to the Black community living in Detroit at a time when the whites were beginning to move out,” said Sr. Fiorentina D’Amore, HVM, who joined the Home Visitors in 1961 after moving to the United States from her native Italy. “So we were the missionaries — which is why we are called the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, because we had a mission of being strangers, Catholic people who would go door to door, telling people about the Church.”
The Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, initially settled in the convent at St. George Parish in Detroit — located at Westminster and Cardoni streets before the construction of Interstate 75.
The following year, the sisters moved further down to Arden Park Boulevard and today are in the Boston-Edison neighborhood.
But the sisters served all over the city of Detroit, ministering as catechists, teachers at Vacation Bible Schools, grief counselors, pastoral associates, social workers, social justice advocates and just about any other job at the parish — along with visiting families in their homes and asking how the Catholic Church could serve the people of God.
“I remember in the early days we would go to a parish as a whole and do a census, going door to door, looking for Catholics,” said Sr. Mary Frances Roberts, HVM, who entered the Home Visitors in 1953. “We were looking for people who had fallen from the Church and inviting people if they didn’t have a church, inviting them to come to our church. If the church had a school, we’d let them know about the school since there was a great interest in having the children go to a Catholic school.”
The Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, not only introduced people to the Catholic Church, they also found vocations along the way.
Sr. Elizabeth Harris, HVM, recalls seeing two women donned in blue dresses and hats going door to door, dropping off information fliers about St. George Church in her neighborhood.
Sr. Harris recalls she didn’t have any plans that weekend — she wanted to go swimming but the pool was closed — so she attended the outdoor information sessions and met a Catholic priest for the first time.
She saw a sign in front of St. George Church saying there was a prayer service at 6:30 a.m., so she figured she would see what it was all about.
“The church gate was open; there were no dogs, no security, so I just walked into the church," Sr. Harris said. "There was no prayer service like the sign said, which was strange, but when I walked into the church, I felt the presence of God. There was no one around for me to talk to, but I felt the experience of God loving me, the experience of God saying, 'You belong here, and you will tell other people about this church.'”
Sr. Laura Marie Kendricks, HVM, another native Detroiter, remembers seeing the sisters walking through the neighborhood where her parents’ convenience store on Russell Street was located.
“One day, some ladies came to visit the store and invited me to St. George,” Sr. Kendricks said. “I started to look out and see if they would come again, and maybe two or three weeks later, I saw the two sisters dressed the same, doing home calls across the street.
“I remember they gave my parents information about St. George just down the street, and since I was younger, 12 or 13 at the time, my older sisters took us down, and we met the Josephites Fathers in charge of the parish,” Sr. Kendricks added. “I went and found out about the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, found out about the Catholic Church, and that’s how I ended up here.”
In more recent times, the Home Visitors of Mary have seen vocations increase in Nigeria after a bishop from Nigeria came to Detroit and visited the sisters.
The bishop was impressed with the religious institute, inviting them to bring their charism of person-to-person evangelization to his diocese. In 2001, the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, arrived in Nigeria, and a year later, three women started formation.
The Home Visitors now have 30 sisters in Nigeria, with five new ones expected to join next year.
Sr. Rosemarie Abate, HVM, who entered the Home Visitors of Mary in 1954, ministered in Nigeria with Sr. Harris and found a commonality in preaching the Gospel in the United States or Nigeria.
“What struck me is how the five women who just professed in Nigeria said they are attracted to the personal connection to the people,” Sr. Abate said. “In some ways, our core hasn’t changed. We may not have summer Bible schools with 500 kids like we had in the 1970s and '80s, and we’re not knocking on doors anymore — some of us are in our 70s and 80s — but we are still in the community, and we’re still reaching out. And our sisters in Nigeria are in the school, the daycares, the legal services and pastoral religious formation.”
Sr. Emeroum, herself a native of Nigeria, said the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary’s charism for person-to-person evangelization has made the institute so successful in her home country.
“What sets the Home Visitors of Mary apart, what makes us different, is considering everybody with the dignity of the human person, with the way they do pastoral care in the community,” Sr. Emeroum said. “It is the person-to-person connections that have brought about a lot of conversions. Here in Detroit, we have two sisters who converted to the Church because of that person-to-person connection. In Nigeria, we have people coming to the Church through our unique approach of evangelization. It has yielded a lot of fruit for the Church.”
Just like when the Home Visitors of Mary were established in 1949, the Catholic Church today is focused on evangelization.
It’s a vision that has served the Sisters, Home Visitors of Mary, well for 75 years. And it's a vision that will serve the Church well into the future.
“Befriend people,” Sr. D’Amore said. “I left active ministry at Christ the King Parish (in Detroit) four years ago, but I go there every Sunday and still feel part of the community. When I see someone who is new, I go over and ask where they are from, and I begin a conversation. People want to be recognized for who they are, and that is why they come to church; they want to be seen by their neighbors, and they want to be welcomed. That’s why people come to a church — and that’s why they come back — because they know they will receive the love of God.
“That’s what it means to preach the Gospel.”
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