For Pa. nuns, life isn’t all work and church

June 6, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

ERIE, Pa.

For work and worship, Sister Kevin Berdis wears sensible shoes, nylons, a blouse, a skirt that goes below her knees, a matching jacket and a veil that reveals only a little of the brown hair above her forehead.

“Like a police officer wears his uniform, this is my uniform for school and church,” said Berdis, principal of Erie’s Holy Family School and a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis.

But during football season, she has another uniform. Berdis puts on black pants, a football jersey and cap to watch Steelers games. She also has Steelers pajamas.

“I love sports,” Berdis said.

Nuns such as Berdis pray, but they also play.

Women who choose the religious life don’t spend all their time kneeling in pews. They have hobbies and interests outside the Catholic Church.

Sisters go to movies, museums and meals out with family and friends. They log onto the Internet, take vacations and cheer on their favorite sports teams.

“I get into the game, and I start raising my voice,” said Berdis, who follows the Pittsburgh Penguins in hockey, the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball and the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs in basketball.

She’s also a fan of the 103 students in the east Erie Catholic grade school she attended and has led for a dozen years.

“We’re real proud of our kids,” Berdis said.

When she enters a classroom at Holy Family, children rise and greet her.

They stand to show “proper respect,” Berdis said. “They need to learn that.”

Education was the main ministry of the School Sisters of St. Francis when Berdis, who wouldn’t give her age, entered. Her community paid for her bachelor’s degree in education and master’s in administration and supervision, she said.

In return, sisters generally turn their paychecks over to their community and then receive a share of the overall pot.

Though laypeople now have taken on most local teaching jobs once held by nuns, education is still among their ministries.

Sisters of Mercy remain part of Mercyhurst College. Erie Benedictines run St. Benedict Education Center.

Berdis and other School Sisters of St. Francis have stuck with their educational roots but also managed to shoot out branches of learning in new directions.

Berdis points to the 40 laptops and 22 desktop computers with Internet access added in recent years at Holy Family. She wants flat-screen monitors next and said students are doing PowerPoint presentations by seventh or eighth grade, “which blows my mind because I never learned that until I was a principal.”

Berdis is one of three members of her community working in education in the Catholic Diocese of Erie. Sister Geraldine Kasper is religious education director at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Girard. Sister Rose Kuzma does that at St. Boniface Parish in Greene Township. Their community is based in Pittsburgh.

Berdis wears a pin with her community’s emblem and a Franciscan medal on a chain in addition to her veil.

Requirements for what religious women wear are a community and sometimes a personal decision, with more nuns dressing like women outside the religious world since Vatican II.

Sister Jacinta Conklin, prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Elk County, said three of the 18 wear traditional habits. Some wear a modified veil and collar; others, just a veil; and a couple, completely secular clothes.

Members of the Congregation of the Divine Spirit have always worn a habit, white or gray, said Sister Michele Beauseigneur, the superior of the Erie-based group that still works in education.

“We feel it’s a sign of our religious life,” she said.

So were parish convents, which have declined along with the number of sisters.

Berdis and Kasper still live in one, connected to Holy Family School and built for 10 sisters in the late 1950s, Berdis said. Kuzma has an apartment closer to St. Boniface.

The convent parlor is now the faculty room. The school nurse occupies space where sisters once taught piano lessons. The convent basement was converted into a science lab and art room.

“We’re utilizing the space because we don’t have the sisters” to fill it, Berdis said. “Why leave it empty?”

Berdis rises at the convent at 5 a.m., prays at 6:30 in the chapel, attends Mass at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church at 7 and gets to school about 7:30 a.m. She stays until at least 5:30 p.m.

If she doesn’t have an evening event, she’ll put on shorts and head to the YMCA or out for a jog “to release all my frustrations and keep in shape,” she said. She has run marathons and also enjoys bicycling and reading.

She prays again in the chapel at 9 p.m. and is in bed by 10.

Berdis said she once asked a little girl, “Don’t you want to join us and become a sister?”

The little girl answered, “No, you work too hard.”

But Berdis sees her religious life as a beautiful ministry.

Two of her six sisters also became nuns. One of her seven brothers is a priest.

“When in second grade, all I wanted to be was a [religious] sister,” Berdis said.

She has no regrets.

“I’m happy where I am,” she said.