By Jay Sorgi • Posted November 19, 2024

“When you come here and you visit the campus, you work on the campus, you live on this campus,” said Divine Providence Village Administrator Angela Babcock. “It is a place that the world tells you can’t exist.”

Not only has the residential home for women and girls with intellectual disabilities in Springfield existed for 40 years, it has also thrived by witnessing the love of God reflected in the faces of the women it serves.

The dozens of residents, staff, and leadership from the archdiocese spent Tuesday, Nov. 12 celebrating that milestone with a party that spanned from Mass to a special luncheon and a performance by a Neil Diamond impersonator.

“We said to him, ‘Everywhere else you go, you’re impersonating, and you are doing a job, but here you are who you believe you are. You’re the Neil Diamond,’” said Babcock. “I think that’s kind of what happens to everybody when they get here. You are the best version of yourself.”

The call to help people be their best spawned from the mission of a saint who is not a household name, but who was canonized within the past 10 years–St. Luigi Guanella, who born in 1842 in a small town in Italy near the Swiss border.

“He founded the Servants of Charity, because as a priest, he went around and took care of the orphan children, the people that were outcast,” said Sister Mary Veasy, SSJ, Divine Providence Village’s pastoral care minister. In 1886, St. Luigi began a residential program called the House of Divine Providence in Como, Italy.

The Servants of Charity and the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence separately began two residential schools for youth with disabilities in the Philadelphia region – a program at Pott’s Estate in Elverson for girls in 1948, and the Don Guanella School for boys in Springfield, Delaware County, launched in 1960.

“The Archdiocese asked the sisters to open up a home here for young women, and so they came here in 1984,” Sister Mary said of the move from Elverson to Springfield that year as an agency of archdiocesan Catholic Social Services. Sister Mary and Sister Susan Lindinger, SSJ, of the Sisters of Saint Joseph have lived their vocation and created everyday moments of joy there since 2007.

“I tell all my volunteers that the simplest things you do for our ladies are extraordinary,” said Sister Sue.

“They’re not caught up in what we’re all caught up in, iPhones and iPads and this and that. They cherish relationships. They cherish seeing someone come back and to be with them, to take them for walks, to read a magazine with them, doing puzzles, playing bingo,  just being with them. (Those) are just extraordinary, beautiful moments.”

Sister Sue, who coordinates volunteers, facilitates such moments of human dignity and happiness among the 80 women who call Divine Providence Village home and the volunteers who simply offer their time and relationship.

“Their gift of a smile, the gift of a hug, the gift of ‘How are you?’, the ordinary, simple things of life are so special to them,” said Sister Sue. “You get the relationships with volunteers (with) them and they always become family to them.”

“They want nothing from you, other than to be loved, and they give that back to us,” added Sister Mary. “Unconditional love. You definitely know God is present.”

Babcock adds that the experience of serving these women of varied abilities, ages, and faiths has helped build a community of workers who treasure their mission far beyond their paycheck and other benefits.

“It’s a chronic love,” said Babcock. “It’s a chronic state of being family and growing together, and us all becoming better versions of ourselves, because we’re all here doing the work that we love and supporting the individuals.”

Sometimes that support involves helping the resident women and girls understand the loss of someone who was part of their community, but even that experience brings a rare and blessed perspective.

“When we lose one of our residents, when one of them dies and we bring them together in chapel to let them know, their response is just unbelievable,” said Sister Mary. “(They say) ‘She’s in heaven now. Now she can walk. Now she can sing. Now she can dance. We have an angel.’ This is their deep faith.”

Sister Sue believes the words of Sister Mary sum up what makes Divine Providence Village the home it has become.

“When she looks in the face of each of our individuals,” said Sister Sue, “she sees the face of God.”