A farewell visit, but a lasting legacy

Tom and Glory Sullivan will accompany the Legatus pilgrimage to Guadalupe for the last time this month, but their longtime support for the care and education of the destitute children of Girlstown goes on.

For Tom and Glory Sullivan, World Villages’ Girlstown in Chalco, Mexico, is a very special place. So special, in fact, that they have made it a large part of their charitable focus since their first visit there in 1990.

“There is nothing else like it,” Glory said of the Catholic boarding school for destitute girls. Tom went as far as to call it “the best charity in the world.”

Over the years, the Sullivans have visited Girlstown about three dozen times, usually taking dozens of interested visitors with them. In 2013, at their suggestion, Legatus began to lead pilgrimages annually to Guadalupe and Girlstown, with as many as 80 Legates and guests participating each year the pilgrimage was offered (there was no trip during the pandemic year of 2020). The Sullivans have been part of the group each time.

This June 10-13, the Sullivans, members of the Jacksonville Chapter and founders of the chapter in Washington, D.C., will once again accompany the Legatus pilgrimage to Guadalupe and Chalco — and at ages 87 and 83 respectively, Tom and Glory have said it will be their last.

It takes a world village.

World Villages for Children today is a network of boarding schools that cares for 21,000 children across 15 communities in seven countries. More than 170,000 children have graduated from the Boystowns and Girlstowns run by the Sisters of Mary, a congregation of over 400 sisters whose vocation is to be mothers to these children from destitute and often abusive situations.

It all started in 1957 when 27-year-old Fr. Aloysius Schwartz (“Fr. Al”), a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., asked to be assigned to minister in the most destitute place in the world. He was sent to South Korea, where the Korean War had left countless children alone on the streets. He built the first Boystown there in 1969.

“We knew his family and would invite him over for dinner when he was home,” Glory said of Fr. Al. “He kept wanting us to visit him in Korea. Once all three of our children [Colleen, Kathy, and Tom] were in college, we went. We dropped the youngest o¡ at school on a Sunday [in 1988], and on Monday were on a plane to Korea."

The Sullivans continued on with Fr. Al to the Philippines, where he had also established a Boystown and Girlstown. He kept expanding his care for the poor even after receiving the diagnosis in 1989 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and given three years to live. He accepted his illness as a gift of su¡ering and became determined to work even harder.

Within the year, Fr. Al heard of crushing poverty in Mexico that was leading many people to leave the Catholic faith. e Sullivans were among his confidants who traveled to Mexico to look at a site he had picked out for a new school. They returned when the new Girlstown and Boystown were dedicated and opened there in 1990. (Boystown was eventually moved to Guadalajara, Mexico.)

Fr. Al died in 1992 at age 62. He was named Venerable by the Church on January 22, 2015. His cause for sainthood proceeds.

Their final pilgrimage.

The 2022 Legatus pilgrimage begins at the Basilica of Our Lady Guadalupe, where the Blessed Mother’s image on the tilma of St. Juan Diego hangs behind the altar. This pilgrimage destination is among the most-visited churches in the world, with an estimated 20 million visitors annually.

In nearby Chalco, pilgrims will experience the immensity of nearly 3,500 girls singing to greet them, tour the grounds with their many fruit trees and vegetables, be entertained by the choir, and learn of the girls’ well-rounded education that includes music, sports, self-defense instruction, vocational skills, and the Catholic faith.

“We’ve taken thousands down to visit,” Tom said of the many groups he and Glory have accompanied to Chalco.. “Everyone cries. It’s a pilgrimage, not a tour. Children and grandchildren are encouraged to come.” He noted that the life perspectives of young people have been powerfully impacted through the experience.

Colleen Opack, the oldest Sullivan daughter, can speak to that life-changing experience. Her parents took her on a trip to Seoul, South Korea, and to Manila, Philippines, while in college.

“We went to ‘Smokey Mountain,’ which is a dump, in Manila where a large population of poor live,” Opack said. “I didn’t know such places existed. That was my moment that changed who I was going to be for the rest of my life.”

When the youngest of her own two children was in high school, Opack volunteered at World Villages. She now works full time as their grant coordinator and donor advisor.

“It is so striking to me what these nuns do,” she said. “Spend an hour with them, and you will be better for having been around them.”

In addition to academic education and religious instruction, the girls at Girlstown receive haircuts, dental visits, food, sports, art, clothing, music instruction, and vocational training. “The education of these children is more well-rounded than the average American student gets,” Opack said.

Advocates for the poor.

Father Daniel Leary, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who as chaplain to the Sisters of Mary regularly ministers in World Villages, praised the Sullivans’ work.

“Tom and Glory have been true missionaries for the poor in their lives,” said Fr. Leary. “They have shown that through their talents, through their gifts, and through their love for the poor, they can advocate for the poor and speak for the poor when the poor cannot speak for themselves.”

Although this is the last year Tom and Glory will be part of the Legatus pilgrimage to Chalco’s Girlstown, they will continue to support World Villages and the Sisters of Mary. “They are saving the Church one child at a time, and the graduates are off-the-chart wonderful,” Glory said. “It’s a miracle in action every day.”

Tom concurs. “Frankly, the Sisters of Mary are able to bring about amazing transformations,” he said. “The future of these children would have been to be a drug runner or prostitute or some nefarious activity, but instead they are transformed into doctors, teachers, nurses, and nuns, and other professions.”

This year, Fr. Daniel Leary, chaplain of the Sisters of Mary, will be the main celebrant at Mass on June 11 at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe during the Legatus pilgrimage. Father Leary first met Tom and Glory Sullivan when they knew him as Danny, a high school pal of their son Tom. In 1993, during summer break from the seminary, Leary worked for the Sullivans’ publishing company. When Leary’s comedic entertaining decreased office productivity, they sent the 23-year-old seminarian to Chalco for three weeks, ostensibly to be sure it was a good charity.

“My impression as a young seminarian was that this was such a place of hope for the poor,” he said. Two years ago, after 23 years as a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Washington, Fr. Leary was given permission from Cardinal Wilton Gregory to become chaplain to the Sisters of Mary.

“I go to the different countries with the Sisters of Mary and hear hours of confessions a day,” he said. “I just do priestly stuff and I say:thanks be to God!” Father Leary called it a great blessing of the Church to work for the poor in this way; to be a part of this healing and evangelization to children through Confession and the Eucharist.

“World Villages is clearly forming lay and religious missionaries to live their faith and evangelize within their families and their communities,” Fr. Leary explained. “It is enabling the young people to have a joy in their Catholic faith.” He described World Villages’ mission as not just giving children a fish for today but teaching them to fish so that they will then teach others to fish. “They are forming missionaries who will then evangelize their families.”

Initially, however, Fr. Leary admitted feeling angry as he listened to so much trauma during Confessions. “The abuse was off the charts,” he said. “I try to go to the Blessed Sacrament a lot. I would put them in the tabernacle with Jesus. One time, I felt Jesus ask, ‘Why are you angry? This child is a resurrection.’

“I have all these Lazaruses. walking around resurrected; they are set free!” Fr. Leary said. “I’ve been a priest for 25 years this June, and I’m happier than ever.

Patti Armstrong is a Legatus magazine contributing writer