Vocations: Religious Life

IC photo/Laura Vallejo

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While in Utah, Sister Chidary Sku, a novice with the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, ministers at Kearns-St. Ann Catholic School.

SALT LAKE CITY — Two novices of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross are in Utah for some months as part of their service.

Sister Sengme Rangsa Marak, from India, and Sister Chidary Sku, from Bangladesh, have been doing service on their road to their permanent vows.

Sr. Sengme has been helping at Holy Cross Ministries in Park City and Sr. Chidary has been ministering at Kearns-St. Ann Catholic School in Salt Lake City.

Sr. Chidary said that her vocation to the Holy Cross order was born when she was in high school.

“My home parish was run by Holy Cross sisters,” and seeing them woke up something in her that was attracted to the religious order, she said.

“God was calling me, so I thought I should enter the congregation,” Sr. Chidary said.

In 2014 she formally entered the order and, if all goes as planned, in 2020 she will profess her perpetual vows.

The vocation to the religious life for her has been a blessing, although in the beginning, she was a little hesitant because of misconceptions about the religious life and entering a religious order, she said.

“Girls sometimes think that entering an order is losing contact with the world. … Their parents teach them that if they enter a congregation they will be away from their families, from their friends, from the world,” Sr. Chidary said. However, “I can mingle, I can have friends, I am in touch with my family. … This is just a way of life that I really enjoy [living].”

Sr. Chidary started her journey in Bangladesh by contacting her international vocations coordinator. After some months she was sent to the Holy Cross community’s international novitiate at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., where all of the religious order’s novices are helped to prepare for a new life and service to God’s people in communities around the world.

 “Blessed Basil Anthony Moreau, founder of the Holy Cross congregations, wanted his members to go out to the world with the message of Christ,” according to the congregation’s website.

 The Sisters of the Holy Cross serve on four continents and in eight countries.

“Living the religious life and working as a religious is my vocation, and I am so happy to be here,” Sr. Chidary said.

Both novices are set to depart Utah in the upcoming months to return to The International Novitiate at Saint Mary’s in Notre Dame for additional training.