After beginning their careers teaching the young, Sisters Mary Ann Fuerst and Alice Marie Soete have spent the last 25 years helping the elderly and disadvantaged in the St. Francis DeSales neighborhood in Walnut Hills.

        The women, members of the Sisters of Mercy, are co-founders and co-directors of the Sisters of Mercy HOME program, which provides financial and social support to low-income elderly and disabled adults.

        The program is celebrating its silver anniversary in style: By December, the HOME office should move out of the basement of the St. Francis DeSales rectory and into a corner of a newly constructed building.

        Sister Fuerst hopes their clients won't be intimidated by the new office. The basement — neat but modest and crowded — suits the program's purposes and clients, she says. Two volunteers, both jobless men, renovated the area from bare concrete floors and walls. One went to the library to read up on the proper method to hang wood paneling. But the program needs more storage space than the current site provides.

        When Sisters Soete and Fuerst established the HOME program in 1976, they started small: They had a $5,000 budget, one room, an electric typewriter and a 1974 Dodge Dart. They finished the year with 25 clients and one volunteer.

        Last year, the staff included four Sisters of Mercy and an associate, two vehicles, three rooms and a hallway and a budget of $112,500. HOME finished the year with more than 500 clients, 20 volunteers and a home health program that served 32 clients.

        Sisters Fuerst and Soete are both Cincinnati natives, and they love the city's spirit.

        “It's our experience that people are very generous in Cincinnati, and I think that's a wonderful thing to be able to say about a city,” Sister Soete says.

        The two women were in school — Sister Fuerst was in eighth grade, and Sister Soete was in high school — when they realized their vocations. Both taught for several years, Sister Fuerst in Cincinnati and Sister Soete in several cities, before founding the HOME program.

        HOME was established to honor the spirit of the Sisters of Mercy's foundress, Catherine McAuley of Dublin, Ireland. The Mercys, established in 1831, were the first order of nuns to step out of the convent into the community. Dubliners quickly dubbed them “the walking nuns.”

        Sisters Fuerst and Soete had hoped to have a permanent base of operations for their work, but when that didn't work, they decided to “just create the environment of mercy wherever we go.” And the House of Mercy Environment was born.

        The environment is a busy one: The agency operates a food pantry, and HOME staff and volunteers provide just about every service for their clients, including home visits, bill-paying, financial assistance, help filling out forms for Social Security and other agencies, transportation and help pre-planning funerals. Two volunteers even deliver Communion to homebound clients. The sisters visit inmates, and have testified as character witnesses on inmates' behalf.

        It's not uncommon for clients to call HOME before they call their own children, Sisters Fuerst and Soete say.

        “We have always considered ourselves their extended family, and I think they consider us their extended family. We always want to be there for them,” Sister Fuerst says.

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Women of the Year
Danya Karram
Francie Schott Hiltz
J.J. Johnson-JioDucci
Jane Lampke Bracken
Mary Frances Williams Clauder
Mauri J. Willis
Merri Gaither Smith
Sherrie Lou Noel
Sisters Mary Ann Fuerst and Alice Marie Soete
The Rev. Dr. Cinda Gorman
Past Enquirer Women of the Year