Feeling the Fire

sister lorita kristufek remains driven
by the spirit that’s always guided her

When most little girls play dress-up, they clomp around in their mother’s heels or make a mess with her makeup. If she wasn’t hanging the aisles of or helping out at her family’s neighborhood grocery store, young Carol Kristufek was dressing up as a Catholic nun. It was surely a sign of things to come.

Recognizing the spark of a vocation, Sister Boleslaus Kral, a fourth grade teacher at Divine Redeemer School in Ambridge, Pa., gave Carol pieces of an old habit — which little Carol used to dress up as a “Sister teacher” — and milk and cookies following her piano lessons at the church. Young Carol’s intrigue only deepened when she tagged along with her father on grocery deliveries to the convent, hoping to sneak a peek inside the convent kitchen.

She remembers the gentle, loving ways of former Sister Jude Dolinich and her nurturing demeanor in helping the first graders at Divine Redeemer bundle up in their coats and boots. And she remembers Sister Damian Baloga as “special” as she prepared Carol’s Communion class to receive the sacraments and organized many fun games of spelling bee baseball in the classroom.

Young Carol sometimes accompanied her deeply spiritual mother and other parish ladies on retreats to Mount Assisi Convent in Bellevue — home of the School Sisters of St. Francis — visits that sold the spirited teenager on her vocation. While Stephen Kristufek supported his daughter’s aspirations, he advised her to hold off a few years and only enter the convent after she completed high school.

In 1959, she transferred from Mt. Gallitzen Academy in Baden, Pa., to Mount Assisi Academy where, as a boarding student, she again encountered Sister Jude and was introduced to Sister Therese Sedlock, who supervised the boarders. “They were so kind, motherly and endearing,” Sister remembers.

As a high school junior, Carol officially became a candidate and postulant of the School Sisters of St. Francis, boarding in the very same bedroom at Little Flower House where she lives today and picking apples from the trees behind the motherhouse. As a senior in 1961, she became a novice, continued her piano lessons and picked up the violin as well. “Those were great days,” she recalls.

She was among the last group of young Sisters to be received into the community as seniors in high school. Soon after making first vows in August 1961 and receiving the name Sister Lorita, she was missioned to St. Gabriel School on Pittsburgh’s North Side where, under the tutelage of Sister Bernard Smolko, she learned to play traditional Slovak songs on the church organ. While inexperienced, Sister also learned the ropes in the classroom by emulating the teaching techniques of her own teachers over the years.

It was only a year later when Sister Lorita was called to meet with Mother Mildred Zaremba, superior of the Pittsburgh Province. She tiptoed over emotional eggshells to get to the meeting, for fear she was in some sort of trouble. Instead, Mother Mildred had a life-changing challenge in mind, sending Sister Lorita and a handful of other more experienced Sisters to Cottage Grove, Oregon.

She spent three days on a dome liner train with her older, more experienced counterparts, all traveling cross-country on their way to Our Lady of Perpetual Help where, she remembers, “you could see Mount Hood from the chapel window.” The year she spent playing the organ and teaching third and fourth grades, piano and CCD to the children of logging families broadened her horizons.

Once she returned to her native Pennsylvania, Sister spent Saturdays and summers taking classes at Mount Mercy College (now Carlow University) to earn her degree, while also teaching in parish schools. She went on to further her studies as the University of Dayton and the University of North Carolina.

The most challenging work of her career came in providing care to emotionally-disturbed children at St. Joseph’s Home in Dayton, Ohio, from 1967 to 1972. There and in her subsequent work with exceptional children at St. Anthony’s Home in Oakmont, Pa., music was her greatest teaching tool. She used creativity, dancing and games to engage and connect with the children.

“Being there for them, playing music for them was wonderful,” she says. “They had no handicaps when the music played. I so loved the kids.”

She also spent time teaching and serving as a principal in San Antonio, Texas; as a parish liturgy director in Pittsburgh; as a caregiver to her aging parents; directing our lay Associates program; and as manager of a senior high rise in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood.

She’s battled and beat cancer twice and says she “thanks God for the gift of time. I’ve been gifted and privileged, uplifted and grounded by God,” she says. “And I’m still working at it.”

Sister has been fortunate enough to visit long-lost family in the Czech Republic and would covet a future opportunity to further explore her family history in the Ukraine. Phone calls and annual visits allow her to reminisce about her beloved childhood days in Ambridge with her brother Joe, a deacon on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana.

Her religious life has been deeply enriched by prayer to the child Jesus, spiritual reading, music, her students and other youth she’s engaged while doing vocation work. “I’ve done a lot of listening to a lot of young people over the years.”

Daily she works to keep balance among her work, creative and spiritual lives. Music remains an underlying theme in her ministry work, these days as music minister at Mt. Assisi Place in Pittsburgh, where in addition to providing the music for Masses, she also puts on special programs from time to time, including an Alive in the Spirit concert this past Pentecost for residents of the personal care home.

“I want to be helpful and creative,” she says. “I am open to do whatever is asked of me within my abilities.”

It’s been six decades since she left home for her life of service. But she still remembers the Latin words etched on a sanctuary window at Divine Redeemer – in hoc signo vinces. “It means ‘in this sign, thou shalt conquer.’ The sign is the cross. With Jesus, we will get through.” The words have always proven true for Sister Lorita.

“I am privileged to be deeply loved by God,” she says. “Unconditionally.”