Ladies of Charity nourish communities

Friday, Jul. 10, 2015

By Rachael Sutherland

Intermountain Catholic

SALT LAKE CITY — For the past decade, the Ladies of Charity have served Utah’s poor with “simplicity, humility, and charity” by administering services to ease the burden of circumstances brought on by poverty. 

Part of the international Vincentian community of ministries, the Ladies of Charity was founded in 1617 by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac in France (See From the Archives, above.)

A Utah chapter of the Ladies of Charity was established in 2003 by Sister Charlotte Marie Clark at St. Olaf Parish in Bountiful, and focused on providing food to community members through a food bank and food delivery service. 

After working within the diocesan school system and visiting low-income families, Sr. Charlotte Marie “discovered that they needed more than tuition assistance,” and established the Ladies to deliver food to the families, regardless of religious denomination, according to Sister Germaine Sarrazin, the current moderator of the Bountiful chapter, who has been a professed member of the Daughters of Charity for 56 years. 

Within two years, a second Ladies of Charity chapter associated with Our Lady of Lourdes Parish was formed to better serve the community in the Salt Lake City area. While the St. Olaf Parish’s 30 Ladies of Charity seek to supply the local food bank and organize places for families to pick up food, the Salt Lake City’s 25 chapter members’ “biggest thing is delivering a box of food to people,” noted former chapter president Jenny McDonald.

“We have about 30 families that we are presently taking care of,” most of whom are working poor, said McDonald. “There are people in the households working, but they have low-paying jobs, and they’re one vehicle repair away from financial disaster, so this is just one way of easing the grocery bill.” 

On the first Tuesday of every month, the Ladies drive to selected homes to deliver boxes of groceries; the second Tuesday of every month they host an open pantry for families. 

“Home delivery is very vital” to the operations of the Ladies of Charity, but McDonald adds that both chapters hold clothing drives, bake sales and other fundraisers supported by their parishes to provide further help to poor families, including seasonal programs to adopt families during the holidays and a more recent project of micro-lending in Haiti. The Ladies even have a “tiny medical fund” to assist families that are “unable to pay a copay,” McDonald said, and a grant from the national association of the Ladies of Charity recently provided Payless gift cards to children in need of school shoes. 

For the Utah chapters, reducing food costs for families “is the one thing that we’re really trying to address to help alleviate the issues of living in poor circumstances,” McDonald said.

On the national level, the Ladies of Charity is “working on systemic change to try to end poverty” through advocacy, said Christine Young, who serves on the group’s national advocacy board and is the Western Region director of the Ladies of Charity. 

Young acts as a liaison between the local chapters and the national organization. 

“On the advocacy committee, we advocate for the poor on a national level and try to make people aware” of the challenges faced by the impoverished, she said. 

Each local chapter is a member of the national organization of the Ladies of Charity, and strives to work with other chapters as well. 

“We try to interact as much as possible, in order to work together as part of the Vincentian family,” said Sr. Germaine, who provides spiritual leadership in her role as moderator for the St. Olaf chapter. Both she and Holy Cross Sister Catherine Kamphaus, the moderator for the Our Lady of Lourdes chapter, begin each meeting with a prayer, meditation, or review of their ministries to “help keep the ladies focused on the Vincentian Spirit of their mission,” Sr. Germaine said. 

The ministry of the Ladies of Charity reaches beyond combating poverty. Sr. Germaine noted that the group improves the spiritual developments of the members and the parish, and allows the Ladies to become “very open to seeing the needs of people and helping in any way they can.” 

Sr. Catherine said the Ladies are “really addressing the needs of the poor” through their actions, but also emphasized the importance of the Ladies participating in the prayer ministry and its ability to unite the community. 

Similarly, long-time member Rita Galster remarked how the “food touches a lot of families,” but the Ladies also provide “great camaraderie and a feeling of participation within the parish.”

McDonald praised the work of the Ladies of the Charity, saying “it is really a lovely, amazing humbling thing we get to do.”