You pay, They’ll pray, For your sins, job or whatever ails you, Bear in mind — these are pros.“It’s what we do,” said Sister Stephanie McReynolds, head of the “Adopt-a-Sister” program at the expansive Mount St. Francis parish and retirement complex in northwest Colorado Springs.
“It’s our brand, so to speak.”
The program started last summer to publicly raise money for the order’s nonsectarian counseling ministry that primarily serves the poor. About 130 donors now get the prayer services of about 40 sisters.
“You don’t have to be Catholic,” McReynolds said. “You don’t have to be any religion.”
It’s not exactly tit for tat.
The suggested yearly gift is $100 or more, but the amount doesn’t matter. A couple of bucks gets the same spiritual boost. Donors get a picture, name and phone number of a sister they can can visit, write, call or maybe even send a plate of cookies to. Personal contact is encouraged.
“A lot of us go through our prayer line and we pray and never get any feedback,” McReynolds said. Many sisters are retired or in the Mount St. Francis nursing center. This is a way for them to keep up their skills. “It brightens up their day. It gives a sense of being in a relationship with people we’re praying for,” McReynolds said. “We’re known as Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration. Every day, every hour throughout the year, one of our sisters is in the chapel praying.”
That gave the board of Franciscan Community Counseling an idea. The ministry needed money for mental-health services offered at the Mount St. Francis campus and in an office at the old St. Francis Hospital east of downtown. It is modeled after successful Adopt-a-Sister programs on the East Coast. So far, it has paid off.
An additional therapist has been hired and the waiting list for clients seeking services has decreased.
Ann Carlisle, a non-Catholic who describes herself as “eclectic” about her spirituality, adopted two sisters. “It’s good to have it from an expert and ones who do it as a life’s work,” said Carlisle, a private practice psychologist.
“It’s just knowing that someone else is on the job, when I might forget. It’s a steady connection with the divine. It’s almost like they adopted me more than I adopted them.” It helped her get through the long terminal illness of her husband, who died a month ago. “The critical part of prayer is that whatever difficulty we’re going through in life is that we don’t despair,” McReynolds said, “that we find hope and find meaning in whatever is happening.”
There are plans to expand the program to others who might benefit from a higher authority. She said a corporate Adopt-a-Sister is coming soon.
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