Printer Friendly Version - Making a Home in a Land Not Her Own

Sister Jacinta Akudo Ibe sees her vocation as represented by a candle that gives its wax to make light. Today, she shares her light by teaching at the Sacred Heart of Jesus school. Photo by Nathan Hughart/The Courier

Sister Jacinta Akudo Ibe has dedicated her life to her faith, a vocation that translates to teaching children here in North Haven through a service that crosses the globe.

Sister Jacinta is a member of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Ragusa, an international congregation of nuns founded in Italy by Maria Schinina in 1889.

“Back then, there was segregation between the rich and the poor in Italy…This woman [Schinina], she’s a baroness…she saw what was happening,” Sister Jacinta says. “She started using her Father’s words to take care of the poor and the elderly and to teach the little children.”

Though the congregation started in Italy, it is made up of sisters around the world from Africa to Europe to the United States.

“I see my congregation, Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Ragusa, as a melting pot,” she says.

Sister Jacinta made the decision to become a nun when she made her confirmation at 10 years old, living with her family in Nigeria. It was that, she says, or join the military, a career path she and her mother had both considered for her.

“She encouraged me, and I wanted to be a soldier…but I realized that if I joined the military, I would never make a nun,” she says. “I do know that that’s the way God was preparing me to be a soldier of Christ.”

“When I made my confirmation, I took it so seriously and I prayed and I just had the feeling that God was calling me and that I had vocation,” she says.

“As I have lived this life, I have never regretted the vocation I’ve embraced,” she says. “I love it. I am very happy.”

“Life is so fragile. We must handle it with prayer and care,” she says. “That is my personal belief.”

Sister Jacinta is the middle child in a family of seven, with two brothers and a sister born on either side of her.

“[I am the] second daughter and also the fourth child. So really middle-middle,” she says. “I learned to see the glass as half full from my father…My father and my mother, they are my role models.”

Sister Jacinta and four other sisters wrote to Sister Irene Russo, who happens to be Sister Jacinta’s predecessor in North Haven, after reading about the congregation in Catholic Digest.

“She was receiving our letters, then she came to Nigeria in July 1990,” she says. “She made disciples of us.”

That was when Sister Jacinta joined the congregation. After she completed her religious formation in Lewiston, New York, she was sent to North Haven in 2000. She became a U.S. citizen in 2008.

“When I became a citizen, it was so wonderful,” says Sister Jacinta, who sought a way to express her joy. “I published a poem called ‘A Land not our Own, but our Home.’”

Since she came to the parish, Sister Jacinta has operated in a number of different roles in the church. For some time, she was a pastor’s associate, helping with CCD classes and youth groups. She also did some work visiting parishioners who were homebound or hospitalized.

Sister Jacinta currently serves as the director of the recently reopened Sacred Heart of Jesus Daycare/Preschool/Kindergarten, which serves pupils aged 2 to 6 at 80 Chapel Hill Road.

“In our ministry, in our service we give, there is no boundary. We are inclusive of people of every race and tongue. No matter your religion, we can minister to you,” Sister Jacinta says.

Sister Jacinta says that the school uses a triangular education plan based on moral, scholastic, and social education. That triangle makes up a part of the school’s logo because, Sister Jacinta says, no one side is bigger or more important than the other.

“In our school, we do all we can to form the children as good citizens,” she says. “Because Jesus loves them and they are special…They are unique, they are unrepeatable.”

She says that their teaching philosophy revolves around self-esteem and helping the children to learn in a way that is natural to them.

“Even when they make a mess, as children, we tell them it is a beautiful mess,” Sister Jacinta says. “If the child does not spread the puzzle all over, how can the child fix it?...That’s how children learn.”

For more information about the Sacred Heart of Jesus school, visit sistersaremyteachers.com.