My years I spent in Italy helping the refugees from many countries was the awakening to know the poor and the unwanted.  I learned through working with Fr Renato Brescani at the refugee center in Rome that there are displaced people coming from all parts of the world seeking a place for themselves where they can live free from war.  For twelve years I went back and forth between Rome, Canada and the United States... I walked the streets of Rome meeting refugees, gathering their stories then trying to find sponsors for them in Canada and the United States.  The most difficult and painful aspects of this job was that they were depending on me to help them.  I was their hope if they were not religious and counted more on God.
To carry this burden of helping these poor people without knowing how I could do it, brought so much stress and pain.  The daily walking the cobble stone streets... in the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter... sometimes living in a dark room, then later in a cloistered Dominican convent, I learned the value of giving until it hurts.

Not knowing how I could move so many people out of Italy was so difficult yet I found that if I kept trying.. knocking on doors until one opened, I realized that I was able to make a difference, helping over one hundred and fifty refugees out of Rome and into Canada... personally going to Canada begging for a sponsor for a family.  I went to Victoria BC on Vancouver Island to Montreal, praying that God would help me find a home for one family...one needy family that was stuck in Italy without hope.

I give thanks to the God for His help so I could help so many and I give thanks to Paula and Antonio D'Amico for their faith and their courage through personal tragedy, when their young daughter died in her sleep. Yet they open up their home to help me and the many refugees that came to their house... and especially the years several families lived with them until I could move them to Canada.  To the D'Amico family I say that God is so good to have brought me to them, we had wonderful days together when so many people from different countries sat around the table at dinner to laugh and speak of their country, the war and the hardships that they still faced.

I also give thanks to the Cloistered Dominican nuns of the Annunziata in Rome who helped me so much during these years I spent walking the streets of Rome... then opening their convent for me to call my home in Italy.  I thank also Fr Timothy Radcliffe op the Master of the Dominican order in Rome who brought healing into my life after working so hard in Italy under extremely difficult conditions.

It is in Italy that I found my way to become a Dominican.