THE BRONX — Like the sycamore tree the tax collector Zacchaeus climbed to get a glimpse of Christ, Jennifher Dircio said she wants her life to be like a ladder, leading lost young people into the light of salvation.
“If you read the passage (Luke 19:1-10), it says Zacchaeus was short; he had to climb something to see Jesus,” said Dircio, a candidate for religious life.
“So,” she said, “I feel called to be a sycamore tree, helping others in their shortness to be able to see Jesus.”
Basia Cdno, also a candidate, agreed.
“I long to take them out of that darkness,” she said of children she hopes to help form in the faith.
Dircio and Cdno are the first candidates for a new community of religious sisters under development — the Franciscan Sisters of the Pure Heart — in the Bronx.
Father Vincent Druding, parochial vicar at Holy Cross Parish, also in the Bronx, envisioned the new community about four years ago during a worldwide crisis in vocations.
These new sisters, he said, are needed to be, “spiritual mothers to spiritual orphans.”
Their charism, he added, will be to incarnate the Beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8) — hence, the new community’s name.
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Father Druding called the need “urgent and vital.” He also hopes that their presence will increase vocations in the area, especially for young Spanish speakers. Both candidates speak the language fluently.
The so-called “vocations crises” had been underway for years when the National Religious Retirement Office, in 2023, released an alarming report.
The office polled 508 American religious communities for numbers of men and women who professed perpetual vows. A total of 438, representing 87%, responded that they didn’t have a single member take these final vows in the past year.
This data follows other reports confirming declines of religious men and women throughout the nation. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said these trends point to a 50% decline over the next decade — from 33,000 in 2023 to about 17,000 in 2033.
But another trend also alarmed Father Druding. He recalled that in July 2020, the Archdiocese of New York announced 20 schools would not open for classes in the fall.
The economic crisis wrought by the pandemic slashed families’ ability to afford a Catholic education, according to a July 9, 2020, news release from the archdiocese.
Father Druding recalled how Cardinal Timothy Dolan convened a video conference with pastors and other leaders.
He told them to prepare their religious education programs to absorb about 2,500 students from the newly closed Catholic schools.
Father Druding lamented the dwindling ranks of religious, but also admired how communities in the Midwest were growing and sending sisters afield in those states, like the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia (the Nashville Dominicans).
Next, while dining with Auxiliary Bishop Peter Byrne of New York, an idea emerged. “I just said, kind of rhetorically, ‘Why can’t we raise up our own?’” Father Druding recalled.
This happened twice before in the archdiocese, more than 30 years ago with the founding of the Franciscan Sisters of Renewal and the Sisters of Life.
Father Druding said Bishop Byrne liked the idea, so he carried it to Cardinal Dolan, who happily approved the exploratory phase for a new community.
The 2,500 students added to an ever-growing population of children not in catechesis, Father Druding said. This image, he added, was re-enforced to him in a “flood of grace” one day while in prayer.
“Here’s how I would describe it,” he said. “Imagine you’re in a helicopter, and you go vertically over the Bronx. And you see thousands and thousands of children and young people who are what I call the spiritual orphans.”
Several steps must be completed before the community becomes official. For example, it must apply and become part of the directory known as the “Private Association of the Faithful.”
Also, an existing religious community must volunteer to give Cdno and Dircio a home where they can continue their discernment and learn how to live the religious life.
For now, the two candidates live at the Aquinas Convent owned by the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, located next to St. Martin of Tours Parish in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx.
Dircio and Cdno are eager to be “spiritual mothers.” They already lead youth and young adult programs at Holy Cross Parish.
Cdno grew up in Ecuador — one parent is from that country and the other is Polish. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Fordham University.
“I’ve met children who just get it,” Cdno said. “They get that Jesus lives in their hearts. And it’s so beautiful. And then there are other children who are consumed by the darkness around them. I see all that, and I long l to just bring them out of that suffering.”
Dircio is from Mexico, but she grew up in the Bronx and went on to attain a degree in health care management at Lehman College. But one of her earliest memories of spiritually lost youth came to her on the first day of a high school economics class.
“The teacher,” she recalled, “was like, ‘Well, kids, look to your right and look to your left. One of you is going to graduate and the rest of you guys are probably going to drop out, get pregnant, or go to jail.’
“While that is a strong statement, it is a true statement because most of my peers did become teen moms or went to jail.”
She said the teacher’s comment depressed her and she wept at home. An older sister said there was nothing she could do, so get over it. Then, years later, she learned of Father Druding’s plans to create the FSPH.
“I just got a real sense that God was saying this is what you’re going to do about it,” Dircio said.
