The mission they chose was to serve the poor in the rough and tumble Northern California gold mining community of Grass Valley.

In 1863, five Sisters of Mercy from Ireland, led by Mother Mary Baptist Russell, traveled by steamer from San Francisco to Sacramento, then over rugged roads by stagecoach to St. Patrick Parish in Grass Valley.

In March, the two remaining nuns from a religious order called to service in this Gold Rush town 138 years ago will leave behind a legacy immeasurable by time.

Their years of service combined, Sister Mary Geneva Paluka, 66, and Sister Mary Rita Jane McCarron, 77, have ministered in the St. Patrick Parish community for nearly 40 years.

As members of the Omaha Regional Community of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, they leave at a time when their numbers have been declining. According to statistics provided by the Omaha Province, there were 686 nuns in 1961 compared to 235 in 2001.

When Sister Paluka arrived in 1977 there were five nuns in Grass Valley, down from 30 in the early 1900s.

“There is difficulty replacing the sisters retiring and many of the sisters are now being called to do direct service to the poor,” she said.

Sister Paluka’s decision to leave at this time followed a discussion with Father Simon Twomey, pastor of St. Patrick, regarding taking a part-time position in preparation for future retirement. Subsequently Sister Paluka’s religious order felt she required the salary of a full-time job and rejected the part-time position when it was offered.

Father Twomey said that many of the two sisters’ responsibilities will now be assigned to a deacon or lay members of the parish.

Sister Paluka, who most recently served as pastoral associate, has become a most familiar face in the Nevada County community where she has lived the past 24 years.

Described by Father Twomey as “a great lady whose quiet presence is very big,” Sister Paluka first came to Grass Valley upon hearing there was a need for a teacher at Mount St. Mary School. After teaching for several years, her focus shifted to the parish community where she began working with lectors, eucharistic ministers and in several religious education programs. Closest to her heart are the people she met in the parish’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program.

“Ever since I was a child I’ve always wanted my non-Catholic friends to belong to the church,” Sister Paluka said with a purposeful smile. She also likes “bringing others into a greater knowledge of their faith.”

Sister McCarron, for whom the song “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” could have been written, first came to St. Patrick Parish in the 1970s. Her assignment was to teach “the three R’s” and music to Mount St. Mary students, but in reality taught much more.

While claiming to be more comfortable with the younger children, saying she felt she “had one foot on the curb with the older ones,” she was known for instituting daily chess contests for upper grade students. The chess competition that started one rainy winter flourished, becoming a popular lunch break activity.

“I even had chess boards in the first graders rooms,” Sister McCarron recalled, noting that chess is a great learning tool. “Chess teaches strategy, thinking skills and its quiet.”

During a second term of service at St. Patrick which began in 1994, Sister McCarron was an assistant and companion to the late Mercy Sister Mary Rita Watry, assisted in the parish office and has led a small group faith ministry.

With only a short time remaining before their departure, the sisters realize it’s more than a chapter of their lives closing.

“We’re taking the whole history of my community with us,” Sister Paluka said. “I think the Holy Spirit is saying its time to move on.”

“(The Sisters of Mercy) take a tremendous history with them,” Father Twomey added. “The presence of religious is always awesome in any parish. They must have touched so many people along the way.”

During their watch, the Sisters of Mercy staffed and supported St. Joseph Girls School, St. Aloysius Boys School, Holy Angels Orphanage for girls, St. Patrick’s Orphanage for boys, a business school, a “select” day school and Mount St. Mary School.

Deacon Carlos Astesana, a longtime member of St. Patrick Parish, attended kindergarten at Mount St. Mary in 1940 when its staff included 16 nuns.

“The sisters were my spiritual mentors,” he said. “They taught not so much by catechism but by their lives.”

Especially during the pioneering years of their ministry, the Mercy Sisters were knee-deep in almost every aspect of parish life, from preparing children for the sacraments to cleaning the church and cooking the meals.

“They worked hard in this community…and often had a hard time making ends meet,” Astesana noted.

To help support their orphanages, the sisters took in boarders and started a finishing school for young ladies known throughout California and Nevada. The finishing school offered foreign languages and fine arts to young women at a time when most girls’ education ended in elementary school.

Astesana believes the nuns’ greatest contribution was their dedication and love for people and “tremendous witness of who Jesus is in their own lives.”

Sister McCarron, who is moving to Omaha to live in a Mercy retirement facility, has mixed emotions about saying goodbye.

“I’ll miss the whole place—the church, the people, the rosary group,” she said, adding philosophically, “but that’s not to mean I won’t find God in Omaha.”

“It seems we do a job and then other people are able to do it. We withdraw and go do another job,” she said.

For Sister Paluka there will a few months of sabbatical leave before moving to Portland, where she will supervise a wing of Mount St. Joseph’s retirement facility.

An “appreciation weekend” for the Mercy Sisters will be held at St. Patrick Parish Feb. 10-11. The festivities, says event organizer Don Kneepkens, will be a time to say farewell to “two women the parish loves” and a ministry that has had “an enormous impact” on the entire community.

On Feb. 10 at 5 p.m., a Mass concelebrated by Bishop William K. Weigand, five priests and three deacons will be followed by a reception and dinner in the parish hall. On Feb. 11, a reception will be held in the parish hall from 12 to 3 p.m. Twenty Mercy sisters are expected to attend the event, including Mercy Sister Patricia Forret, president of the Omaha Regional Leadership Team.

Tickets to the dinner are $25. For reservations or more information, call (530) 273-2347.

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