God’s ‘steel magnolia’ finally goes home

By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T

A life of prayer is a life of adventure.
That is not something everybody understands, but it is a truth that Sister Peter Claver Fahy knew in the silence of her heart, and she followed that truth everywhere it led her for more than 100 years.
She died Dec. 3, at the age of 105, at the motherhouse of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity on Solly Avenue. She was loved and respected by wealthy businessmen and prison inmates, by priests and nuns — and at least one local hermit — and was apparently the only centenarian in the vicinity who could have used a secretary to handle her correspondence.
“She was a mystic, although she probably didn’t know she was,” Notre Dame Sister Mimi Bodell said several days after the death of the tiny, soft-spoken nun who had been her spiritual advisor.
“She’s the reason I started a house of prayer in North Philadelphia,” Sister Mimi said.
Sister Peter’s influence was wide enough to encompass the great Catholic activist Dorothy Day, and inmates at the Curran Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road. She was still making her way slowly down the prison hallways when she was 99 years old, leading prayer and Bible-readings in her ministry to its incarcerated men, and writing letters to judges on their behalf.
“She had a profound impact. She was an extremely zealous missionary, and she was able to think outside the box,” said Sister Barbara deMondeville, historian for the Trinitarian sisters. “All her life she found creative ways to work with the poor and to work with prisoners. She established houses of hospitality for women in crisis long before that was the thing to do.”
Sister Peter came to Philadelphia at the age of 80, for a ministry of prayer in what was officially her “retirement,” and immediately set to work in some of the toughest prisons in the region. She continued to work without fanfare until she could no longer hobble down the long prison halls. Even then, people from all backgrounds came to her for advice on how to pray and live their lives.
“I’ll put you in my heart,” she would tell those who asked her to pray for them. Just days before she died, she had her niece, Notre Dame Sister Sarah Fahy, mail out her Christmas cards. The people on her mailing list got cards in the mail from her on the day of her wake.
Sister Peter Claver was born in Rome, Ga., as Hannah Elizabeth Fahy. She was one of 14 siblings, 11 of whom survived childhood.
Her mother was of German-Jewish heritage, and her father was Irish-born Catholic. According to Sister Peter’s nephew, Father Thomas Fahy, her mother converted to Catholicism after attending a mission in Rome given by a visiting Redemptorist priest.
As a young woman, Hannah Fahy had an independent streak. To the consternation of some in her family, she struck out on her own in New York, where she trained for ballet and a career as a dancer or on the stage.
After a time, she obtained an interview with a prominent producer, who bluntly told her she shouldn’t be there. “If I had a daughter, I would rather see her dead than in this business,” he said.
Hannah Fahy took his words to heart. She left New York and enrolled at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. After receiving her undergraduate degree she worked for a time with the Catholic Girl Scouts organization.
She entered the convent of the Religious of the Sacred Heart, but later realized their apostolate would not fulfill her desire to work with the poor, especially African Americans.
“When she was 8 years old and had scarlet fever and was quarantined, a woman who was a poor African American woman stayed with her day and night, and nursed her,” said Sister Sarah Fahy. “It was an experience of love that she never forgot. It was the inspiration for her.”
In 1926, she entered the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, then a young congregation founded in Alabama that specialized in missionary work and outreach among the poor. She took the name Sister Peter Claver of the Most Precious Blood, honoring her special apostolate to African Americans and her love of Christ.
But she never regretted her time with the Sacred Heart Sisters. “She always said it was through them that she really learned how to pray,” Sister Mimi said.
Over the next half-century as a Trinitarian sister, before coming to Philadelphia, Sister Peter was stationed in New York, New Jersey, Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. She serving variously as a teacher, principal, librarian, director of social services, director of a house of prayer, and diocesan director of religious education.
In all of those apostolates, people were moved by the deep-South, “steel magnolia” charm of Sister Peter, whose indomitable strength pulsed just beneath her gentleness, charm, charity, and fervor.
Early in her career, in 1933, she met Dorothy Day, a convert and founder of the Catholic Worker movement whose cause for beatification is now under consideration. The two women shared in common Catholic orthodoxy, coupled with an uncompromising championship for those on society’s margins.
It was like a meeting of John the Baptist and Francis of Assisi — Day’s feisty, in-your-face personality complemented Sister Peter Claver’s gentle-yet-determined manner. The two women remained life-long friends, and Sister Peter was one of the last people to visit Day before the activist’s death in 1980. Day said it was Sister Peter Claver who introduced her to spiritual retreats and made her Catholic life complete.
At their first meeting, according to Day’s autobiography, she told Sister Peter Claver of her plans to found The Catholic Worker, the newspaper that her organization still publishes. Sister Peter reached into her pocket and gave Day all she had — a dollar. It was the very first donation for the new paper.
For Sister Peter, prayer — not just social work and activism — was always at the heart of her ministry.
At her wake, it was testified that she persuaded even casual visitors to join her in reciting the the rosary. She always meditated deeply, and recommended such forms of prayer to others.
In her later years, she received honors for her work from Trinity College, La Salle University, Holy Family University, and Franciscan University, Steubenville. In addition, two Philadelphia facilities honor her memory in name — the Sister Peter Claver Catholic Worker House, and Hannah House, a women’s halfway house.
When Sister Peter was in her final days, Sister Mimi asked her spiritual mentor whether she could feel God surrounding her as death approached. Sister Peter looked at her in astonishment, and then replied: “I am in the presence of God.”
Sister Peter Claver’s funeral Mass was celebrated at the Most Blessed Trinity motherhouse on Dec. 7. Interment was at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Cheltenham. She is survived by members of her congregation and many nieces and nephews.

CS&T’s Ellen O’Brien contributed to this report.
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo Parish and freelance writer.