By Ana Rodriguez Soto - The Archdiocese of Miami
Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Maria Jerkins listens as fellow co-workers praise her work during 18 years as director of the Office of Black Catholic Affairs.
“Maria carried on when there was no funding,” said Sister Elizabeth Worley of the Sisters of St. Joseph, archdiocesan chancellor for administration.
She was referring to the archdiocesan cutbacks that took place in 2009 and eliminated all funding for the Office of Black Catholic Affairs — a setback that did not deter Jerkins.
“With her team of volunteers, she made sure that the ministry carried on. She always had a smile, no matter what,” Sister Worley said during a lunchtime gathering July 10 where Jerkins’ co-workers honored her as she embarks on her second retirement.
The Miami native and convert to Catholicism spent the first half of her professional life as a teacher and principal in Miami-Dade County public schools. This June, she concluded 18 years as director of the Office of Black Catholic Affairs.
She was the third director of the office, which was founded by Miami’s second archbishop, Edward A. McCarthy, in 1989. The office grew out of the black pastoral council he established after the 1980 riots and the pastoral plan drafted during the first archdiocesan synod, which concluded in 1988.
During her tenure as the office’s director, Jerkins founded Mbofra Ne Nyame (Children and God), an African-American choir and liturgical dance group aimed at keeping teenagers in school and in the Church; she coordinated only the second census of black Catholics ever conducted in the Archdiocese of Miami; she traveled to post-apartheid South Africa; and she made sure that she and other members of her Black Catholic Ministry Implementation Team traveled every five years to the meetings of the National Black Catholic Congress.
Along the way, she also managed to find time to graduate from the two-year School of Ministry and be commissioned twice for a five-year period of service as an ecclesial lay minister.
Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Katrenia Reeves-Jackman, who takes over as director of the Office of Black Catholic Affairs, speaks at the retirement luncheon for Maria Jerkins.
“She is the best beggar in the world,” said Rosetta Rolle Hylton, volunteer director of Mbofra Ne Nyame, referring to Jerkins’ ability to write grants that enabled choir members to travel to Key West every year and to other parts of the U.S. every summer.
It is not travel for travel’s sake: While on the road, the children are learning about other parts of the country and meeting other black Catholics. They also are ministering through their performances in churches. And they are having fun as a group.
One of the disciplines imposed by Jerkins on members of Mbofra Ne Nyame is that they show their report cards each quarter to ensure they are working hard in school. Those in academic or disciplinary trouble do not get to go on the road.
“Every child that’s been in Mbofra Ne Nyame and has gone through it to the end has graduated from college or is in college presently,” Rolle Hylton said. “It’s only because of Maria that Mbofra Ne Nyame exists.”
In honor of “those children that she loves so much,” the Black Catholic Ministry Implementation Team has founded the Maria Jerkins Scholarship Fund, said Katrenia Reeves-Jackman, who succeeds Jerkins as director of the office — also as a volunteer.
“It isn’t just Maria that you see in the office. Behind Maria is a whole team of volunteers, people who are working to carry on her legacy,” said Reeves-Jackman, a parishioner at St. Philip Neri in Miami Gardens who worked as a training manager for Bellsouth and AT&T for the last 36 years.
“I’m not trying to fill Maria’s shoes. I could never start to do that,” Reeves-Jackman said, pledging to “continue what Maria has established.”
Jerkins, for her part, will retire — again — to enjoy the company of her two grown sons, her grandson and “a million little cousins,” while continuing to be involved in her home parish of Holy Redeemer in Liberty City.
She promised not to be idle, however.
“I have a book to write,” she said. “Let’s keep things moving on and always remember me in your prayers.”
Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Maria Jerkins, seated at center, poses with members of the Black Catholic Ministry Implementation Team, friends and former assistants who attended the luncheon in her honor. At left and crouching next to Jerkins are former assistants Janeth Arguello and Marie Simon, respectively; Charles Thompson, president of the Black Catholic Ministry Implementation Team; Beatrice Hudnell, Jerkins' friend since the seventh grade and a fellow parishioner at Holy Redeemer; Rosetta Rolle Hylton, director of the Mbofra Ne Nyame children's choir; Sherley Simon, who was a member of the choir; Theresa Davis of the Black Catholic Ministry Implementation Team; and Katrenia Reeves-Jackman, who succeeds Jerkins as director of the Office of Black Catholic Affairs.
