In four months, Sister Rita Lewis has shuttled more than 200 people to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Her efforts have helped House of Mercy return to almost-normal operations following a surge in infections months ago that forced HOM to close for two weeks.
Sister Rita says it was heartbreaking when people kept turning up positive. In some ways, the experience was reminiscent of her early days at the House of Mercy, when Sister Rita watched another epidemic envelop residents.
It was the late 1980s, and Sister Rita was transporting AIDS patients to the hospital and to doctor appointments. She remembers her first patient:
“He would come into my office and look so sick. I remember the last time I dropped him off at the hospital, he walked in and he was so emaciated and so ill. I remember going in to visit him a couple times after that. He ended up dying at the hospital,” Sister Rita remembers. “That was kind of the beginning of more and more people being afflicted with AIDS and then their circles of friends.”
As a nurse, Sister Rita used her background to reassure people about the reality of the risk of infection vs. the perception people had at the time.
“There was such a stigma for AIDS patients,” Sister Rita says. “They couldn’t share what they were going through with anybody because they would be ostracised by their families or their friends even.” That shame and isolation intensified their suffering. The comfort from Sister Rita and others at the House of Mercy converged to help fill the gap in emotional support.
“One AIDS patient lived in the boarding house across the street from us. I remember being in the doctor’s office with him one day as we were sitting there, he looked at me, and said, ‘Thank you for what you do. We’ve been here for years, and no one cares about us, but you do care.’
“I thought, ‘Wow. That’s so important that they know someone cares,’” Sister Rita says. She has devoted her life to being that someone for thousands of people–starting with her own family.
It was 1967 when Sister Rita’s mother died at 37. Sister Rita was only 10 when took over the role of mother to her six siblings, who ranged in age from three to 13. Originally, the plan was to send the siblings to various relatives following her mother’s death, but the siblings didn’t want that–and neither did their father.
”We didn’t really know our father that well. He was always working, but he decided he was going to keep us together. Both sides of grandparents and aunts, uncles, everyone pitched in, and we made it work,” Sister Rita remembers.
“We would be fighting with one another. The house would be a complete mess. All my father would have to say is, ‘There’s a case worker coming tomorrow,’ and we would scurry around to make sure the house looked nice and make sure we looked well kempt.”
The family lived in Elmira, where Sister Rita had been taught by the Sisters of Mercy. They too helped the family following the loss of their mother. Eventually, she would would join the sisters after deciding a traditional trajectory was not for her. After all, she had already raised a family.
“I knew I was going to stick around until my youngest siblings were old enough to be on their own. I did that,” Sister Rita says. “When I felt like I was ready, I felt called to do something different. I knew I didn’t want to do what everyone else did: get married and have a family.”
It was the poor Sister Rita wanted to serve. She was inspired by Catherine McAuley, an Irish sister who founded the Sisters of Mercy in the 1830s based on her love for the poor.
Sister Rita also had learned about church’s preferential option for the poor (a trend throughout the Bible that gives preference to the well being of the poor and powerless in society). She was doing prison ministry as a novice in the Boston area when she heard about Sister Grace opening the House of Mercy. “I wanted to get involved and see what it was all about,” she recalls.
When she returned to Rochester to finish her formation, she visited HOM and instantly fell in love. When she was done with her training, she applied to a job Sister Grace Miller had posted in a newsletter. She was hired for her nursing background. She knew nothing of the social services and systems she would over the years learn to master or the stories and remarkable people she would encounter.
“In my opinion there was no better place to be or minister than the House of Mercy because (here) you are really with the poor. Their lives to me are truly sacred, as all life is, but they certainly have a special character of holiness and sanctity because of the terrible odds they’re up against,” Sister Rita explains.
Survival is their daily occupation, Sister Rita says. The emotional, mental and physical fortitude necessary to keep trying, to stay alive is humbling and awe-inspiring.
“I remember this older, frail woman,” Sister Rita says. “We were at mass at the House of Mercy. We were sitting around the table. People were offering their prayers, and she said, ‘I am grateful that I woke up this morning.’ I guess I had never heard that in such a profound way.
“It really struck me because I thought to myself, ‘Wow, she really meant it,’ because the odds were so much against her being able to wake up because of the hardships that she faced every day just trying to survive.”