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WORKS OF ART
WORKS OF ART
Sale of handcrafted items benefits ministries of nuns
By LINDA M. LINONIS
YOUNGSTOWN
On a mission to help people in their country, Sisters Alexandra Klimovich and Maria Karas have traveled more than 5,000 miles (one way) from St. Elisabeth Convent near Minsk, Republic of Belarus, to the United States.
The Rev. Edward Brienz, director of missions/evangelization in the Diocese of Youngstown, coordinated their visit in the Diocese of Youngstown. The sisters will visit various parishes, where they will sell their handmade goods to benefit their ministries.
Sister Alexandra said she and Sister Maria, Orthodox nuns, arrived Nov. 13 and will return to their native land in late December. Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Minsk is the capital.
She said there are 100 professed sisters at the convent, which also works with the 300-member Sisters of Mercy. Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok is spiritual father of the convent.
The nuns said the handmade goods are made at workshops at the convent by the sisters and some employees. Proceeds benefit the ministries of the St. Elisabeth Convent.
“It’s a three-minute walk to the {National Belarusian} Psychiatric Hospital,” Sister Alexandra said. “The sisters go to every department ... to visit children to seniors.” She said the nuns listen to them, give communion and share religious talks.
“It diversifies their lives,” she said of the patients.
The clinic serves wide-ranging needs. It is a boarding home for children with special needs, boarding home for mentally challenged adults, rehabilitation center for mentally challenged children, municipal hospital and tuberculosis clinic.
The nuns visit 180 children in the boarding home who are mentally and/or physically challenged and need constant care. “Their parents can’t keep them at home,” she said, noting there are no resources to help. The children are in the orphanage and have little, if any, parental support and contact. The nuns help with medicine, hygiene kits, wheelchairs and computers, and they engage children in craft activities.
Sister Alexandra, who has been in the convent four years, said she came into the life “in a natural way.” She said helping people “filled her life.” She said serving the poor made her “feel God in [her] heart.”
She said working with the mentally and physically handicapped children gave her a “sense of calm and balance,” though one would think the opposite. “It’s like a miracle,” she said.
St. Elisabeth Convent also established a farmstead that helps men who were homeless, addicted to drugs or alcohol or recently released from jail. In exchange for lodging, meals and medicine, the men work in the agricultural fields. Another such farmstead is for women in similar situations as the men. Women work in the kitchen, care for domestic animals and make handicrafts, depending on their abilities.
The sisters said the convent has workshops, where the icons, crucifixes, wooden and alabaster crosses, wooden rosaries, prayer cards, wooden toys, stained-glass ornaments, small wooden boxes, mosaics, ceramics, Christmas decorations, nesting dolls and hair clips are crafted. All are made by hand, and attention is paid to the details.
Sister Alexandra described the process of painting an icon on wood blocks, which must dry thoroughly before the process begins. Fifteen layers of a mixture including honey and glue are painted on to achieve a smooth surface. Real gold flakes are used in the icons. The stylized image of the subject, Jesus, for example, is painted. The colors, Sister Alexandra said, are in natural form and are powdered. Glue and egg yolk are added. “The benefit of this process is that the colors never fade,” she said.
Icons also are created on marble bases. Colored stones are ground up for various hues and glue adheres the crushed stones.
In sewing workshops, vestments for Catholic and Orthodox priests are hand-sewn. In other workshops, the other handcrafted items are made; everything that is painted is hand-done.