Big Palatine delegation to witness saint's canonization at the Vatican

Jeanne Jugan, who will be canonized a saint Sunday at the Vatican, wasn't shy about begging for her cause, providing care and housing to the needy elderly she took in off the street in a time long before Social Security.

To this day, the order she founded, Little Sisters of the Poor, relies on begging to help support its 202 homes for the needy elderly around the world, including St. Joseph's Home for the Elderly in Palatine. It's the full-time job of two nuns at each home to beg, said Sister Mildred Mary, director of nursing at the home.

"For 170 years, that's what we've been doing," she said, explaining the home gets about 40 percent of its funding from Medicaid, but the nuns also collect donations of vegetables and meat, visit Catholic parishes to solicit funds and apply for grants from foundations.

"We just installed a $400,000 emergency generator," she said, raising much of the money with a golf outing, but believing God will help out with the rest, a concept businessmen often have trouble accepting when first appointed to the board, she said.

"We're always in the red, but we always pay our bills," she said. "We believe in divine providence. When we need the money, we get it."

Palatine also is the order's home base for all its operations from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean. As such, it's sending a delegation of 24 to Rome for the canonization, including six of the 16 nuns, employees, residents, family members and donors. Many of them were feted in a send-off party Wednesday at the home that included singing "Companions on the Journey" while the resident band played.

"The residents are ecstatic," Sister Mildred Mary said. Six of her nurses are going, she said. "They want to share the joy." She quickly added four new employees will cover for them, so residents still will be well cared for.

Sister Jeanne Jugan founded the order in France in 1839. The humble nun died in obscurity, having allowed a priest to claim credit for founding the order. But 11 years after her death, an investigation corrected the record.

The process that led to sainthood was begun in 1970. In 1979, she was declared venerable and in 1982, she was beatified. Last spring, her canonization was announced. "That is very quick for Rome," Sister Mildred Mary said.

The order's first foray into the New World was in Chicago in 1876 at Polk and Halsted streets. The order has had the home in Palatine since 1965 and still has a home in Chicago on the Near North Side.

Worldwide, Little Sisters of the Poor has more than 2,700 nuns, making it one of the major orders, and has 60 novices in training, considered a strong number when few people enter religious orders, Sister Mildred Mary said.

She decided to join at age 10 when, as a cheerleader in Louisville, Ky., a girl cheering for the other team asked if she wanted to do volunteer work that weekend with the elderly. She loved the way the nuns interacted with each other and the elderly. Her commitment didn't waver; she's been in the order 45 years now.

It might seem, she said, that she was a nun merely by chance because she had "nothing better to do that weekend. But nothing is by chance."