Local Sisters of Charity prepare food for the soul

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

With the ongoing pandemic making it impossible for them to host their usual groups of college students and religious sisters who travel to New Orleans to give volunteer service, the four Federation of Charity women religious who reside at the House of Charity on Cambronne Street were looking for alternative ways to help others.

The sisters decided that one of those ways would be to cook dinner twice a month for the residents of Hotel Hope, a hotel-style shelter staffed by the Sisters of the Presentation that helps homeless women and their children get back on their feet and into stable housing.

Recently, the women religious prepared a hearty spread of cheesy chicken casserole, collard greens, carrot and celery sticks and fresh-baked cookies. The meals were carefully packaged and bagged by the generous cooks before they delivered them personally to Hotel Hope on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Each container of food was marked with the corresponding room number at Hotel Hope – to ensure that every mother received the correct number of meals to feed her whole family that night.

“When our community was founded in 1858, we started (ministries in) education, orphans and the sick, and so paying attention to the needs of women and children has always been a part of who we are,” said Sister of Charity Peg Johnson, one of the volunteer cooks.

Past goodies delivered by the group to Hotel Hope have included ham and baked beans, red beans and rice, cornbread, brownies and fried chicken.

“Once a month, we also buy (a week’s worth of) groceries for their breakfast meal – Hotel Hope will tell us how many bananas, packages of cereal and how much milk to bring,” noted Daughter of Charity Patty Huffman.

Hotel Hope, which currently houses seven mothers and eight children, is continually seeking individuals and groups to sign up to bring meals. Visit hotelhope.org for more information.

The House of Charity foursome, who include Sisters of Charity Monica Gundler and Vivien Linkhauer, also recently started making a monthly meal for the Jesus Project, a neighborhood nonprofit that assists families in the sisters’ own Gert Town community. After asking the Jesus Project what it needed most, a monthly meal was requested.

Earlier works by the community of Catholic sisters for the Jesus Project include a monetary donation to help defray the costs of the nonprofit’s Thanksgiving meal and helping out with Christmas gift-wrapping.

[email protected]