Sister Judith Frikker (L) receives Sister Taryn Stark's First Vows in Burlingame, CA.

Sister Taryn Stark professed first vows First Vows as a Sister of Mercy on July 14, 2012, surrounded by sisters, family, friends, and associates at the Mercy Chapel in Burlingame, CA.  Sister Taryn pronounced her vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service to the poor, sick, and ignorant, the fourth vow particular to the Sisters of Mercy.  Sister Judith Frikker, Community President of the Sisters of Mercy, West Midwest Community, received Sister Taryn’s vows on behalf of the West Midwest Community.

“The celebration of Taryn’s first vows was a joyful event for the entire Community,” Sister Judith said. “The ceremony reflected Taryn and her lived international experience. It is a sign of hope for the future to have Taryn become a vowed member of the Sisters of Mercy.”

Taryn was ebullient after the profession.  Taryn said, “The immense joy I feel inside and from the Mercy Community can only be a grace from God. I couldn’t stop smiling. You could feel the joy and the energy in the room. I felt so loved. Nothing else can affirm your calling more than that.”

The profession ceremony celebrated by Father Richard Menatsi,  Executive Director of IMBISA,  Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa, included others important to Sister Taryn: novitiate minister Sister Rayleen Giannotti, and witnesses Sister Cindy Kaye and Sister Genemarie Beegan. Her mother, Ruth Stark, was present as were her nephews Michael and Stephen Stark.

The ceremony was a step along Sister Taryn’s journey with Mercy which formally began when she became a candidate in 2008, but her Mercy roots are much deeper. “The sisters have always been a presence in my life,” says Taryn. Her mother Ruth was one of the first Burlingame Mercy Associates when the associate group was formed in 1984. Ruth visited the campus frequently, bringing her small daughter with her.

The two traveled all over the world, as Ruth worked with the World Health Organization in Fiji and Catholic Relief Services in South Africa. Wherever they went, Ruth sought out the Sisters of Mercy. After college, Taryn became an internal auditor with Catholic Relief Services in South Africa and then a CPA in Rockville, Maryland.

Feeling that she wanted to give her life more deeply to working with the poor, but convinced she was too old for religious life at 30, she Googled the Sisters of Mercy. “I went to a web link that invited me:  ‘Come and See for ages 18 to 40!’  It was a huge thing,” she said, “not just a light bulb, but a huge stadium lighting up, knowing I can still do this. I went through a discernment process, but I knew at that moment.”

Taryn began her formal discernment with the sisters in Burlingame after attending the 2007 Mercy Challenge in Cincinnati. When she entered as a candidate in 2008, she worked as school secretary at Notre Dames des Victoires in San Francisco and then as resident services assistant at Britton Court Apartments, a Mercy Housing complex in San Francisco’s Visitation Valley neighborhood. At the same time, she took courses at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

In 2010 Taryn was in residence at the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy novitiate in Laredo, Texas. When she returned to Burlingame, she volunteered at the Sister Mary Philippa Clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco for six months. Her second ministry was working at Mercy High School San Francisco with Campus Minister Rita Cutarelli.

She is delighted that a position as school registrar will be her first ministry as a professed sister beginning this summer. “I really immersed myself in the school,” said Taryn. “It was wonderful to see how the girls know (Mercy founder) Catherine McAuley. You can’t get more Mercy than Mercy High School!” 

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