Grace Fuller, 55, smiles for the camera. Photo by Neha Banka/BI

When St. Vincent’s Hospital, a private institution in Manhattan closed its doors amid a citywide uproar in April 2010, medical technician Grace Fuller thought she and other qualified employees would quickly find new jobs. The hospital, founded by the Sisters of Charity, was the last Roman Catholic general hospital in New York City and was known for its service to the poor and uninsured.

The hospital was important to the city’s residents. It was a major supplier of health care to the homeless and poor, who came from across the city to seek treatment, according to an administrator in one of the many reports written about the hospital’s closure in the New York Times. In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, the hospital also played a major role in providing medical assistance to those affected.

Fuller, who lives in Greenpoint, had been at the hospital for 20 years administering tests using specific technical equipment known as an electrocardiograph and Holter. “We were told that we would be placed into other hospitals, but there just weren’t enough placements for everybody,” Fuller said.

More ominously, she said, the available jobs themselves had changed in ways that no longer fit her long-acquired technical skills. At St. Vincent’s Fuller was responsible only for her specific job running two kinds of tests. Searching for a new job, however, she discovered that one individual must be equipped to do multiple jobs.

“They were combining our jobs with nurses aides,” she said.

She recalls a job fair at which she learned that the job she had done, working the EKG and Holter machines, now required a license. Moreover, hospitals were seeking practitioners able to perform other technical jobs such as drawing blood.

“After working for 20 years, I don’t think I should start again,” Fuller said. She said she would lose the seniority status she had acquired after devoting 20 years of her life to her job.

She also lacks computers skills and was not familiar with other technological advances that took place in the last 20 years.  Nor does she have a college degree, having entered the job market immediately upon graduating from high school.

One option is to enter a training program at hospitals offering jobs that do not require a college degree. Her union also offered retraining when the hospital closed, but at 55 years old she doesn’t want to go through training.

Fuller has been unemployed now for almost two years, and it is unclear when or how she will rejoin the workforce. She said she considers herself better off than most unemployed people she knows. She receives the maximum for unemployment from the state, which is $405 per week, but that will run out at the end of the year. Her four sons, in their mid-to-late 20s and 30s, all have steady job and provide additional assurance. She is convinced her sons would provide assistance if her situation became dire.

It is just Fuller and her husband in the household, and she manages. “I don’t splurge on buying things. I just buy what we need,” Fuller said. Her husband retired from his job as an emergency medical technician in the Fire Department in October, and the couple is waiting to receive his pension by the end of November.

Rent is not a problem since she and her two sisters share ownership of a three-family brownstone, which they inherited from their parents.

She is still bitter about the closing of St. Vincent’s. “We were really angry when we were laid off. Because we really thought somebody would come in and save the hospital,” Fuller said. “I think the problem was that [the other hospitals] weren’t willing to pay me what I was being paid in St. Vincent’s. My salary was higher than that of the newer set of people coming in.”

Fuller was getting paid about $20 an hour, she said, while the newer people were getting around $13-14 an hour. According to Fuller, it was natural for them to hire somebody for less money.

“We were told that the money was gone. But we were never told what happened to it. When did it disappear?” she said. “They were installing flat-screen TV’s by the elevators and we wondered where in the world did those come from if they had no money! They were always doing ‘renovations’ but they kept telling us that they didn’t have money.”

She is also angry with her union, 1199. She recalls the union doing nothing about the entire situation. “In fact, some of the [union] people started looking into other hospitals [for jobs] themselves months in advance. By word of mouth if they heard of jobs opening in other hospitals, they would transfer all of a sudden to these hospitals”, said Fuller.

By the time the hospital closed down, there really weren’t any jobs available, Fuller recalled. But that is what the situation looked like to her. What actually happened will remain an inside story.

“The union was willing to train me but I didn’t want to do those jobs. They wanted me to do patient care. And at my age, I wasn’t going to hurt myself doing that. I’ve seen what some of the women I know had to do. And with my knees and back, its ridiculous,” said Fuller.

“I loved my hospital. I was in a job I loved to do. I was doing it for many years and I was good at it. I didn’t have any problems. I felt betrayed”, she said. “It was made to sound so hopeful that some other hospital would take us over and St. Vincent’s would never close. But they just gave me a pink slip and told me I could clear out my locker today or come do it the next day. That was it.”

Father Vincentius Do during a Saturday Mass at St. Rosalia’s Roman Catholic Church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (Alejandro Lopez de Haro/ The Brooklyn Ink)

On a recent Saturday evening Father Vincentius Do, 34, is in the midst of performing a Mass in English at Saint Rosalia Roman Catholic Church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “You take for granted that there are good priests in your church, and then you get one like me, and then you really have something to think about,” said Rev. Do to the parishioners at the pews who immediately chuckled at his self-deprecating joke. Rev. Do is originally from Vietnam and has a strong Vietnamese accent. He admits that when he first arrived three years ago several parishioners made complaints about not being able to understand him. “I think my English is ok, but people have had trouble understanding me,” he said.

A widespread catholic priest shortage in the United States has made the presence of international-born priests like Rev. Do much more visible, prompting concern within dioceses all over the country that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for churchgoers to understand the Holy Mass through the sometimes impenetrable accents of non-native English speaking priests.

In Brooklyn most international priests come with knowledge of English. However, their strong foreign accents have lead to confusion during church services. In Brooklyn there are currently around 100 international priests with the majority of them coming from Nigeria, Ghana, the Philippines and Colombia, according to the latest statistics provided by the Diocese of Brooklyn.

A study of U.S. parishes by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a non-profit Georgetown University affiliated research center, found that 34 percent of Catholics surveyed stated that an international priest had often served at their parish in the past five years.

“We had one international priest that would say ‘The Lord be with You’ during Mass, and the parishioners would not answer back because they could not understand him,” said Sister Kathleen McGonigle. Catholic parishioners are expected to reply to this prayer by saying “And with your spirit.”

McGonigle administers the accent reduction classes for the Diocese of Brooklyn, which began eight years ago as a direct response to parishioner complaints. Rev. Do attended these classes for up to a year. Here non-native English speaking priests participate in all sorts of phonetic drills, like reading scripture out loud, to better their speech in English. The teacher is also instructed to help them individually with any specific pronunciation problems that they may encounter.

“If we don’t understand the priest how can we be expected to stay through the Mass?” said Ric Lo, a parishioner at St. Rosalia. Lo attends both Rev. Do’s English and Chinese sermons and he says that his pronunciation is very good in both.

According to Antoinette Degaetano, 75, the teacher currently in charge of the accent reduction classes, non-English speaking international priests face problems with syllabication, stressing of vowels and final consonance. Further adding their mastery of these speaking rules is a must if the priests wish to verbally communicate effectively in the English language. The mispronunciation of words will result in a confused congregation, said Degaetano.

Fast speech on behalf of international priests can also hinder a parishioner’s ability to comprehend the Mass. Father John Jairo Granados, 44, of Colombia arrived in Brooklyn three years ago and is an alumnus of the accent reduction program. English is difficult for Rev. Granados. He believes that pausing between words and careful pronunciation has been a successful strategy for his effective delivery during Mass. “I make sure that I am understood by pronouncing each word slowly,” said Father Granados.

The accent reduction classes do not just seek to help out the priests in delivering the gospel. Pronunciation of day-to-day words has led to funny but annoying situations for international priests. In the case of Rev. Do this means being able to finally say the word pizza without potentially bringing laughter when parishioners invite him to dinner.

“The class was successful,” says Father Do, “because people don’t complain anymore.”

Sister Mary Paul (left) and Sister Geraldine (right). Photo courtesy of The Center for Family Life.

By Stefanos Chen

The stairs leading to the fourth floor of the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park are winding and narrow, which is why Sister Mary Paul Janchill used the elevator in her later years. By the time you reach the fourth floor entrance, you can already smell her smell, says a staff member that knew her. To the uninitiated, the scent is imperceptible.

Sister Mary Paul died in May at the age of 88 from an apparent heart attack. She was a tiny woman, even before her back began to bend gently with age. Her death came nine years after the death of Sister Geraldine Tobia, with whom she created the center, which over 30 years transformed a great deal of thinking about the state’s role in helping children whose parents have given them up to foster care, but who nonetheless remain a part of their lives.

It is not an easy model to replicate. Both Mary Paul and Geraldine held advanced degrees and social work and lived on the premises, in a suite of sparsely furnished rooms on the fourth floor above the lobby. While their order, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, encouraged the pair to live with other nuns, they insisted on staying in Sunset Park.

At the top of the stairs is an entrance to a white corridor of rooms, the doors of which are all shut. The staff member opens the door to a room numbered 41, but it won’t swing open all the way—a large cardboard box blocks the egress. This was her living room, he says, as he looks about the blank canvass-covered walls. The room is comparable in size to a small study, with just enough space for a bookcase and armoire. He points to where things used to be.

“This is where we watched Obama’s inauguration,” he says in the direction of boxes labelled “Girls Coats” for an upcoming clothing drive. She would often entertain guests in the room, discussing politics and policy, two of her favorite subjects, until around 10 pm, when the center closes its doors to the public and she would retire to her spartan bedroom.

In the corner is a stack of paintings and awards that Sister Mary Paul had accumulated in the 30 years that this was her home. Impressions of oceans and flowerbeds and rivers are interspersed with heavy brass plaques for years of public service. Most of her belongings—the habit she donned daily, the stacks of critical texts, the reams of typewritten letters —have already been packed in boxes, stored away in a distant Manhattan annex.

Yet the room is not entirely bare. In the spots where picture frames used to hang, grey rectangles outline the wall like a photographic negative. Further to the left, a cruciform shadow shrouds an unused nail in the wall. There are three windows—two in the back that frame a row of brick houses, and another obscured by a plastic-covered air conditioner coated with dust; the plastic crinkles in the breeze.

“We’re going to utilize this space for different programs,” he says in a quiet voice, partly out of reverence, but partly because the adjoining rooms are already in use as offices. The sound of youthful laughter rises from the third floor hallway as the staff member mentions a new cooking course that will convert the sisters’ kitchen into an East-Asian culinary lab. “Her life was materially spare, but spiritually rich,” he says on the walk back to the lobby.