Nestled in the Projects and Nourishing Souls

September 28, 2012, 5:00 am

By COREY KILGANNON

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St. Michael-St. Edward Church, seemingly shoehorned into the drab brick buildings of the Ingersoll public housing project in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is shuttered and neglected.

But its rectory is a vibrant hive of young, mostly female missionaries who have taken vows - some for a year, some for a lifetime - of celibate dedication to the poor and downtrodden.

Heart's Home, a Catholic organization with centers in some of the poorest slums in the world, opened in the Bronx in 2003 but moved to Brook lyn in 2008 to serve the needy in local housing projects, nursing homes, shelters and streets. Its missionaries derive from the longstanding role of consecrated virgins committed to lives of mercy, prayer and apostolic work.

Currently, six female missionaries and two priests rise early to sing psalms in the small chapel and then divide up for silent prayer sessions after a group breakfast. Then they go out in pairs to comfort and serve the elderly, infirm, hopeless and homebound - offering assistance for a number of things including social service problems, bringing in communion and praying the rosary.

Many are invited to meals and special events at the home, where the den mother is Sister Regine, a sturdy, jolly woman in a brown robe and a white habit. She hails from the Alsace region of France and can cook some tasty regional dishes. On Tuesday, Natalia Fassano, a missionary from Argentina, was preparing lunch and discussing her upcoming final promises ceremony , to commit to a life of missionary work.

Laetitia Palluat-de-Besset, 35, has already done this, having left a budding business career in Paris at age 22 to join Heart's Home for “something more true in life.”

By opening her heart to the needy, “I have discovered the mercy of God,” she said.

Marian West, 28, from Lancaster, Pa., is considering the lifetime commitment as she winds up a 14-month term in Brooklyn after two years in Manhattan working as a massage therapist and a dancer. “It was all about making the money to pay the rent, and stress, stress, stress,” she said.

“One day, I met a woman in the subway feeding the poor and she told me, ‘I've sold everything I had and now I'm free to love.' That stuck with me. I wanted the freedom to love.”

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Tori Pfeffer, 29, center, a volunteer missionary for Heart's Home, prayed with (from left) Mariana Rodriguez, 61, Delia Perez, 68, Virginia Medina, 65, and Delia Romero, 87, in Ms. Medina's apartment in the Ingersoll public housing project.