Sister Cathy Cahill, director of the Franciscan Center, hosts retreats to respond "to that spiritual need only God can fulfill."
By BABITA PERSAUD
Published April 9, 2004
RIVERSIDE HEIGHTS - This nun likes a good murder mystery, especially Agatha Christie.
She likes taking long walks and sitting by the Hillsborough River on the lovely grounds of the Franciscan Center in Riverside Heights, her home for the past 15 years.
She likes this time of the year - Easter.
She doesn't like The Passion of The Christ.
Faithful everywhere are flocking to see Mel Gibson's blockbuster.
Not Sister Cathy Cahill, 60.
"I've decided not to," she said during a recent walk around the center in her Birkenstocklike sandals. "I really gave it a lot of thought."
And prayer.
"If you want me to see this movie, I certainly will," she told God.
For her, what's important is focusing on the life and teachings of Jesus, not the brutal way he was killed.
What about making a prequel, the life of Jesus? she said. "Like the Star Wars trilogy."
Then, she will go.
Catherine Marie Cahill joined the convent at age 17, three months after graduating from a Catholic high school in Providence, R.I. In 1961, it was not unusual for a young woman, she said. Of the 220 girls in her graduating class at St. Xavier Academy, 22 became nuns.
Unlike most, she chose the Franciscan order, named after St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment, including animals. She liked St. Francis' "joyful approach to the love of God," she said. "He saw all of creation as a reflection of God's goodness."
Sister Cahill's father, who died when she was young, was a firefighter. Her mother operated a hospital switchboard.
Sister Cahill is the youngest of six children, and her siblings became engineers, chefs and paralegals. She was the only one to choose religious life. At St. Xavier, she had admired the nuns who taught her and the good they did.
After high school, she lived and trained for three years at the Franciscan Sister of Allegany convent in western New York. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education at nearby St. Bonaventure University and a master's in education administration from Rhode Island College.
Sister Cahill taught sixth-graders in Pennsauken, N.J., seventh- and eighth-graders in Pensacola, and prep school in Jamaica.
She spent seven years at an all-black school in Carthage, Miss. A month before she joined, the Ku Klux Klan torched the school.
It was 1966, the day Martin Luther King Jr. started the voter registration "March Against Fear" through the South after civil rights activist James Meredith was shot.
Sister Cahill and fellow sisters stayed in Carthage for two years teaching in a makeshift school.
"There were threats and fire bombs thrown on the property," Sister Cahill said. "But there is something about when you know what you are doing is right."
In the early 1980s, she went to Chicago to work with alcoholics and their families, leading retreats. That work eventually led her to Tampa, first as a counselor at St. Francis Parkside, then as director of the Franciscan Center on Perry Avenue in 1989. Today, she hosts retreats for all kinds of ailments, "responding to that spiritual need only God can fulfill," Sister Cahill said.
She is highly regarded in the recovery community, said Christina Bellamy, a psychotherapist in North Tampa.
"One of the things I appreciate about Sister Cathy is that she has the ability to fold in people like myself," said Bellamy, who leads a spirituality workshop at the Franciscan Center and considers herself "so not Catholic."
Sister Cahill doesn't force prayer books or try to convert people, Bellamy said. "She just hangs out with me as a friend and a colleague."
Sister Cahill leads retreats for the public, including one this weekend called the Holy Week retreat. They typically last one or more days and include talks or one-on-one sessions.
"Mostly, people are trying to find the meaning in their own life. What is God saying to me?" Sister Cahill said. "We can help them find the answers for themselves."
HOBBIES: Reading, writing to her nieces and nephews.
FAVORITE BIBLE PASSAGE: "I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly," Jesus from the Good Shepherd story. (John 10:10)
HER TAKE ON DAN BROWN'S THE DA VINCI CODE: "A fascinating read. I read it as fiction. I think some of his historical sources could be questioned. It didn't rock my faith."
CURRENT READ: Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, set in South Carolina.
LAST MOVIE: The Girl with a Pearl Earring. "I read the book."
