How these Chicago nuns use sports to spread their message of service: ‘When we band together, we're powerful'
They wear black and white, but still stand out in a sea of Chicago White Sox fans.
One has danced atop the dugout at Rate Field. Another earned a Topps trading card for throwing a perfect strike. And a third has run the Chicago Marathon 13 consecutive times. Sports is a habit, but their life's work is a higher calling. They're nuns.
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A lot of attention has been given to the Sox since the fandom of Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, for the South Side baseball team was revealed. But religious women from local orders have frequented Sox games for decades. According to longtime team organist Nancy Faust, a few sisters even sat near her on the infamous Disco Demolition Night.
'We need to be people that are seen at ballparks. We need to be seen as people who stand by the bedside of a resident who is dying,' Sister Jeanne Haley of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm told the Tribune.
'There are so many ways we can be present to people. We might get pushback from adults who had nuns who slapped their hands, but I always say to those people, 'Honey, I'm a nurse. And I had my hand slapped too.''
Haley's loyalty to the Sox began when she was a child in Oak Park. She remembers eating hot dogs with her parents and five siblings in the Comiskey Park nosebleeds. The self-described tomboy who cheered for Tommy McCraw always wanted to become a nurse. She began volunteering as a teenager, reluctantly, at Sacred Heart Home in Chicago, where she worked with senior citizens. Haley admired how the sisters took care of the residents — and each other.
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More than 50 years after taking her vows, Haley is still taking care of others. Now based at her order's mother house in Germantown, New York, Haley was the longtime administrator at St. Patrick's Residence in Naperville. A former co-worker's son designed a sign that said, 'Nuns love the White Sox,' which she brought to games in the early 2000s. When she was invited to dance atop a dugout with Sox mascot Southpaw, she eagerly accepted.
'I will walk with Jesus and be grateful when he holds me, when I can't walk any further. I trust in that, I really do,' she said. 'I don't know if he's going to get the White Sox back to the World Series, but that's probably not the most important thing.'
Sister Mary Jo Sobieck of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield plans to be among the faithful at Saturday's sold-out celebration of Chicago's homegrown pope.
It's a return trip to the field where she wowed the crowd — and subsequently went viral. On Aug. 18, 2018, she threw a ceremonial first pitch for a perfect strike after bouncing the ball off her bicep. Then a teacher at Marian Catholic in Chicago Heights, Sobieck's pitch was captured on a baseball card, a bobblehead and even nominated for an ESPY Award.
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Sobieck grew up the youngest of 10 siblings in Minnesota and has been with her order for more than 32 years. She returned to Illinois recently after a Spanish immersion program language took her to Tucson, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas.
Sobieck told a friend prior to the election of the first American-born pope that 'we have to make it cool to be Catholic again.' She said she admires not only Pope Leo XIV's connection to the Chicago area, but also what he symbolizes as a global leader who can inspire people to choose work based in faith.
'It brings me to tears because of the hope that I have and the dream I have of just a revival in the church for vocations, that's where I am with this,' she said. 'The church definitely needs just a new generation, the next generation of servant leaders, in our convents and in our seminaries.'
Marian Catholic's Sister Sobieck on mission to help homeless: 'We rise up when we meet people where they are'
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Always athletic, Sobieck thinks sports and Christianity go hand in hand — they have similar mentalities.
'For me, the whole sports piece turned into a fire for giving myself completely and just unreservedly, as I did with my teammates in striving for a goal,' Sobieck said. 'I mean, that's what Jesus did, right? He put together a team of 12 people and the goal was to spread the word.'
For those who are considering a life devoted to the church, Sobieck says the lifestyle is not as limiting as some may think.
'Life has changed — not ended — and that change is transformational … in profound ways,' she said. 'It's just the beginning, you know?'
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Sister Stephanie Baliga of the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels in West Humboldt Park was seeking change when an injury forced her to step away from her track and cross-country career at the University of Illinois. A 'powerful experience' at a retreat moved her to enter the order at 22 in 2010.
Now, she spends her mornings training for her 14th Chicago Marathon — she wants to plant a life-sized cardboard cutout of the pontiff along the route so runners can give him a high-five — before gathering donations used to feed and care for people living in poverty on the West Side of the city.
Baliga was teaching religion at St. Sylvester School in Palmer Square when she learned a new pope had been chosen.
A band of nuns, one 'crazy' Christmas party and the rebuilding of a West Side neighborhood
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'I was more excited than I have been about almost anything else in my whole life,' she said. 'I heard about the white smoke right before I was going to teach kindergarten. I found out right after that the pope was from Chicago and I had only very, very, very remotely heard of him before, so I was quite surprised. I had no idea this was even a possibility.'
Baliga admires Pope Leo XIV's background as a missionary, like her, and as a priest who understands religious life. His interest in the Sox will inspire her to get to a game at Rate Field, where she is volunteering during Saturday's celebration.
'It's such an awesome, amazing testament to the faith of the people in Chicago and the faith of all the people who guided him — his parents, the priests, the nuns, all the people that he encountered when he was a kid on the South Side,' she said. 'This is what faith does. When people have faith, we produce amazing witnesses to the faith.'
Two of the pope's aunts — sisters of his mother Mildred Prevost — were nuns. Sr. Mary Amarita Martinez of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dubuque, Iowa, took her vows on Aug. 15, 1928, and served as a school music teacher in Clinton, Iowa. She died in 1945.
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Sr. Mary Sulpice Martinez lived 95 years and was a member of the Sisters of Mercy for 77 years, according to her 1999 death notice in the Tribune. She taught at St. Mary of the Lake (1925-30), St. Mary, Lake Forest (1945-50), St. Patrick Academy in Des Plaines (1958-59; 1961-67) and Mother McAuley High School (1969-70), among others.
Pope Leo XIV has appointed nuns to key roles at the Vatican and allowed one to publicly address him this week — a move usually reserved for those in holy orders, the Catholic News Agency reported. None of the women interviewed by the Tribune felt the need to be given a bigger role to feel fulfilled by their life's work.
'When we band together, we're powerful,' said Sobieck, the viral strike-thrower. 'Because we've gotten smaller (in number), we've tended to not take as many risks as our foundresses (did), like sending sisters out to different parts of the world and trusting it was going to bear fruit.
'To me, this is a critical time in our history, that we take those risks again because I feel like that itself is going to be the witness that inspires young people to say, 'Oh my God, I want to be a part of that.''
What a pitch.
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