Sister recognizes call to serve at parish

Every morning, a sister from Holy Names Convent does what many women of faith do on a typical Sunday morning: She attends Mass at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1503 W. Dean Ave.

Holy Names Sister Irene Knopes, however, does not simply sit in one of the pews with the rest of the parish. Instead, she sits as a leader, as one of the few woman pastoral ministers in the Catholic Church.

In fact, she is the only woman pastoral minister in the Spokane Diocese today.

About 28 years ago, the diocese appointed three women as parish administrators, including Holy Names Sister Carol Lee at St. Joseph Parish. In 1993, Holy Names Sister Ann Pizelo began serving in that role until Knopes took over in 2000.

The first appointments were made in response to Vatican II and the search for emerging models of the church.

“St. Joseph is the only parish that retained having a woman parish administrator,” said Knopes, noting that she is paid the same as a priest and has a house and utilities covered. The parish pays for a priest to come and say Mass.

“We’re all called to serve each other,” she added. “There are many different levels of leadership and service that come with an entity as large as the Catholic Church.”

Pastoral ministers are members of the parish staff who share the responsibilities of daily care of the faithful under the leadership of the pastor.

As a pastoral minister, Knopes does everything a pastor would do except leading in the Sacraments.

Knopes says there is no typical day in the life of a pastoral minister.

“For example, today I went to Second Harvest Food Bank for two hours from 8 to 10 a.m., driving a truck back to the West Central Neighborhood,” she said recently.

She mostly spends time with her parishioners, as someone to talk to. She uses her reflections on the mission of Jesus Christ every day for inspiration as a leader in her community.

“I was just as important as the Pope today with the people I interacted with, because I was there for them,” Knopes said.

“As a pastoral minister, I lead them as someone who has lived their experience. They can relate. I was married, and my teens rebelled.”

Knopes says she grew up in southern Idaho as a tomboy.

“My father was a share-cropper when I was growing up,” she says. “I remember playing with the Mexican children whose family worked with my father, and we grew up working together. I did not know the language, but I understood the cultural background.”

That helps with the community she serves, where many of Spokane’s Hispanics live and worship. St. Joseph’s offers a 1 p.m. Sunday Mass in Spanish.

Knopes’ family moved to central Idaho for her middle- through high-school years. She continued to work with her father in the hay fields, logging and working with the horses.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in business management at Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston.

In 1964, Knopes was married and began rearing her two children. She also worked for the Potlatch Corp.

After more than 20 years of marriage, her husband died of a heart attack at age 45. She remembers someone once telling her that losing her husband at her age was a terrible thing.

“No, I thought, ‘If this happens it is the best time to happen,’ ” she says. “We had raised our children together. They were 19 and 21 years old.”

Knopes saw instead that she had a great window of opportunity to change careers. She yearned to study pastoral ministry at Gonzaga University and began to explore religious communities.

She began work toward a master’s in pastoral ministry at GU in 1998, but later used half the credits in 2008 to work toward and later earn a master of divinity degree.

Knopes also continued to work for Potlatch, leaving work at 3 p.m., driving to campus for a class at 5:30 p.m., then driving to Zips for dinner to be home by 11.

“The classes were good for the brain and for the heart,” she says. “Yes, it was intellectual learning about the Scripture and the church, but the course was also a special form of prayer and it left me feeling touched.

“When I finally felt peace with a religious community, I felt I was able to quit my other job.”

She then joined the Sisters of the Holy Names and moved to Holy Names Convent, 2911 W. Fort Wright Drive.

Knopes says she joined the Sisters of the Holy Names because the convent is involved in parish education ministries. There she gained the inspiration and motivation to assume the position at St. Joseph Parish.

“A sister at Holy Names Convent recommended me for the new job at St. Joseph’s Parish,” she says. “I believe in being called forth by other people. I thought, ‘Well, if someone else thinks that I can and am good enough to do it, I must be.’ ”

Knopes says she is not after a title, but is simply living and working as Jesus worked. Because St. Joseph’s has had three women as pastoral ministers, it wasn’t a big change for the community.

“St. Joseph’s is a wonderful community and a big family,” she says. “We share meals and support each other. The relationship we have is what is most important.”