A pioneer for Latinos arriving here
But for the past decade and a half, the energetic Sister Vanderneck, now 67, has been at the heart of efforts to welcome and integrate Hispanic immigrants in the Pittsburgh area.
She and others at Casa San Jose have helped them navigate searches for jobs, homes and social services. She has accompanied them at immigration court hearings, taken their late-night calls, attended their wedding receptions, sung in Spanish Catholic Masses, helped to serve Latin-themed holiday dinners and spoken up for immigrants before politicians, clergy and judges.
“She is one of the best resources the Latino community has in Pittsburgh,” said Lizbeth Garcia of Dormont, a member of that small but growing population.
“This is a vital ministry, especially at this time in our country, and the anti-immigrant sentiment that is so prevalent now,” added the Rev. Karen Battle, interim pastor at St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, which hosts Casa San Jose.
Sister Vanderneck has until July served as executive director at Casa San Jose since its founding in 2013. As of July 1, she has held the new role of director of civic engagement, which will include speaking at public gatherings, fundraising and working with partner agencies. The transition helps fulfill her long-range goal of setting Casa San Jose on course to being self-sustaining.
Succeeding her as executive director is Julian Asenjo, who had been working as a service coordinator and previously served as a board member of Casa San Jose. He brings more than 30 years of experience in international education, travel and advising at the University of Pittsburgh.
Sister Vanderneck is marking her 50th anniversary this year in the Sisters of St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic religious order based in Baden, Beaver County. She has taught high school Spanish and religion, worked among Latinos in Miami and done mission work in the Amazon region of Brazil. More recently, she did social-service outreach with Hispanics out of Catholic parishes before launching Casa San Jose.
“When the sisters asked me to do this they said, ‘You have this passion for Latinos — go and start an agency,’ ” recalled Sister Vanderneck, who has short, salt-and-pepper hair and a strong, nononsense alto voice, which served her well in her previous roles as a teacher and principal.
A mutual acquaintance put her in touch with St. Mark’s, a small but socially active congregation in Brookline, a neighborhood with a growing Hispanic congregation.
Leaders at St. Mark’s “said to me, ‘We see the Latinos here, we don’t speak Spanish, we want to reach out in some way, so you can be our way of reaching out,’ ” Sister Vanderneck recalled.
Ever since, Casa San Jose’s staff and volunteers have worked in the tight basement quarters of the church’s former Sunday school rooms amid desks, filing cabinets and floor fans. Its stated mission: to be “a community resource center that advocates for and empowers Latinos by promoting integration and self-sufficiency.”
Rooted in her faith
Casa San Jose does not proselytize and it serves people regardless of their religion.
But Sister Vanderneck’s motives are rooted in her own faith, represented by Catholic images displayed on the office walls.
There’s an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a maternal figure venerated by Latinos; a poster depicting the Holy Family as Latino immigrants; and a picture of St. Joseph, who is venerated as a patron of families and immigrants and is the namesake of Casa San Jose (“St. Joseph House”).
Many of the Latinos helped by Casa San Jose did not enter the country legally. In some cases, the parents lack legal status while the U.S.-born children are citizens.
President Donald Trump made illegal immigration a central issue of his successful campaign and sought to link it to violent crime. His administration has expanded deportations and made clear that all immigrants lacking legal status could face deportation, not just those the Obama administration prioritized in its later years, such as violent criminals and national-security risks.
While the Trump administration is still deliberating whether to retain the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which grants legal space for those brought illegally by their parents as young children to the United States, it has rescinded a similar Obama-era protection for parents of legal residents.
Sister Vanderneck gets phone calls criticizing her work. People ask, “What part of illegal in illegal immigrant don’t you understand?”
She said many immigrants come here out of poverty or fear for their safety in unstable homelands in Latin America. Opportunities to migrate legally are limited. She said immigrants shouldn’t be punished for a broken immigration system, nor should families be threatened with separation, as could happen if one or both parents are deported and leave behind children who are U.S.-born citizens..
“The present government is dead set that we have to get rid of all these illegals because they are a danger to our society,” said Sister Vanderneck. “I am here to say there’s no danger to our society in the people I work with. And if there is we call them on it. We do not support domestic violence perpetrators. We try to teach the women you do not have to live with this. We do not support guys who go out and drink and drive.”
But most often, she said, she deals with hardworking families who have been in this country for years, trying to eke out a living while living in fear of deportation.
She spoke of a Mexicanborn couple who lack legal documents, as does their oldest son, who avoided applying for DACA so as not to call attention to himself.
“Mom and Dad work like dogs, as many jobs as they can get,” such as cleaning movie theaters, Sister Vanderneck said.
“We have to do away with this living here without documentation,” she said. “It is too insecure to raise a child in this environment.”
A day in the life
While Sister Vanderneck has no typical day, here’s how one shaped up earlier this year:
She got up early to take a friend to the airport, then went to morning Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Beechview, another neighborhood with a growing Latino community. (Weekday and Sunday morning Masses at St. Catherine are in English, but Sister Vanderneck has often sung with the small worship team at the parish’s Sunday afternoon Spanish Masses.)
By mid-morning, Sister Vanderneck was at the office, wearing corduroys, slippers and a print blouse with an abstract stainedglass design.
She was talking in Spanish with a client as they stood in the break room at Casa San Jose, surrounded by boxes of files and a few coffee supplies, while volunteer Max Rosenfeld sat at a makeshift desk, busy on his laptop.
They were helping a young, petite woman from Guatemala slowly untangle problems left by the recent deportation of her husband.
The woman was working part-time, cleaning houses, but didn’t earn much, said Sister Vanderneck. The bilingual Mr. Rosenfeld helped her fill out an online application for her U.S.-born children to receive basic medical and food benefits, which as citizens they can obtain. The mother, who lacks legal status, cannot receive such aid. From private funds, the staff was able to provide the mother a little help with a Giant Eagle gift card and a ConnectCard good for 10 bus rides.
“Muchas gracias,” the woman said.
That afternoon, Sister Vanderneck met with the small Casa San Jose staff, sitting at folding tables in the St. Mark’s fellowship hall.
Opening the meeting was another staff member, Sister Valerie Zottola.
“Let’s just take a moment to meditate,” Sister Zottola said, acknowledging the weight of the recent workload.
“Breathe deeply,” she said. “Remember we are in the arms of God now.” After a period of silence, she added: “Lord God, we ask, please open our hearts, so that we may serve our brothers and sisters.”
Sister Zottola coordinates the volunteers who work at Casa San Jose, many of whom signed up after the election. “There’s hardly a day when I don’t have someone inquiring,” she said.
Volunteers do everything from translating for clients at appointments to advocating for immigration reform.
“They say, ‘I can’t just sit by and read stories about what’s happening. I need to do something,’ ” Sister Zottola said.
(Said new volunteer, Phyllis Schapiro: “I’ve always thought volunteering was important in my life and done quite a bit of it, but it’s the Trump election that really got me interested in the immigrant and refugee crisis.” She’s not religious but finds common cause with the faith-based Casa San Jose: “I just don’t believe one needs religion or a belief in God to truly want to help people.”)
During the Casa San Jose staff meeting, a big topic was the effort to help undocumented immigrants prepare power-of-attorney and custody documents in case they get deported.
Other topics included upcoming events and efforts to have the agency become selfsustaining.
After the meeting, Sister Vanderneck spent the late afternoon with a variety of office tasks. She worked with one volunteer on the agency newsletter.
“OK,” she told another volunteer, “we need to start on our budget.” Only in passing did she mention, to no one in particular, the toll the work is taking: “Oh, my back is going out,” before returning to task.
Interest in Latin America
Sister Vanderneck grew up in Indiana Borough, a place that even now has a minuscule Hispanic population. But Catholic missionary stories fueled a lifelong interest in Latin America. She started studying Spanish at age 12. As a teen, she took every Spanish course the high school offered, then advanced Spanish courses at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Most of her education was in public schools, but in four years of Catholic school, “I absolutely loved the Sisters of St. Joseph,” said Sister Vanderneck. The order — with a long history of community living, service and education — anchors its prayer-fueled, active ministry in the spiritual tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits.
She joined the order at age 17 and earned a bachelor’s degree in teaching Spanish at Mount Mercy College (present-day Carlow University).
She taught Spanish and religion at Catholic high schools in Shadyside and Ebensburg while working toward a master’s in theology at Duquesne University.
The degree program’s emphasis on social justice “had a tremendous influence on the choices I made with my life,” she said.
“I studied liberation theology and world religions, the social doctrine in the church,” she said.
Liberation theology emerged primarily from 20th century Latin America and calls on the church to side with the poor and politically oppressed. Catholic social teaching includes emphases on human life and dignity and on the needs of the poor and other vulnerable people.
Sister Vanderneck served two stints in the Amazon, helping to teach lay-leadership skills to indigenous peoples and to reflect on “how the gospel can influence their reality,” she said.
“They had to find their own voice and learn their own dignity,” she said. “They had rights to a decent price for their crops or a decent price for their fish and they didn’t have to pay a fortune to the vendor for the coffee and the sugar.”
After returning from Brazil, Sister Vanderneck served as principal and Spanish teacher at a Catholic high school in Miami and later returned to southwestern Pennsylvania to care for her mother in her last years.
In the early 2000s, Sister Vanderneck began an office at St. Hyacinth and later St. Regis Catholic parishes in Oakland to help new Hispanic residents who had begun turning to the church for help with basic needs.
That eventually led to the 2013 founding of Casa San Jose.
Today the agency has five full-time and three part-time workers, some of them funded by grants. It’s one of six agencies participating in Immigration Services And Connections, which helps Allegheny County immigrants and refugees with legal status to integrate and to gain access to social services and programs.
Casa San Jose’s staff includes a full-time community organizer, Monica Ruiz.
“As social workers, we’re taught to see the big picture,” Ms. Ruiz said. While case-working in previous jobs could help individual problems, “I was tired of putting Band-Aids on broken bones.” She sees this role as a way to advocate more broadly for justice in wider social and governmental structures, such as for immigration reform.
Sister Vanderneck regularly recites a prayer of the 16th century St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose teachings are central for the Sisters of St. Joseph: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my entire will, ... and give me only your love and your grace,” it says.
“Some days I live that better than others,” she said. “Somedays I just want a good meal and to put my feet up.” But, she added: “I do believe that I am where God wants me to be, and as long as I keep following that lead, then the workwill be blessed.”