“It was my place to be – it was just comfort,” Sister Rita Murillo remembers of St. John Gualbert Cathedral in Johnstown, her family’s “second home.” Their Catholic faith and the freedom to worship was something her father cherished, having experienced the violent power struggles in 1920s Mexico when the government closed churches.
Her grandparents came from different regions of Mexico, drawn by steel mill jobs and the promise of opportunity. The eldest of seven, Sister Rita grew up speaking English and Spanish, surrounded by a loving and joyful extended family. She remembers the “great adventure” of riding up the Johnstown incline with her dad and siblings, picking elderberries on the walk down, grateful for parents that gave them “such a full life.”
Beginning piano lessons in second grade, Sister Rita practiced at the convent, feeling at ease among the Sisters of St. Joseph. “We were all musicians,” she says, recalling her dad’s “gorgeous tenor voice” and the way he sang in harmony with her mother. “You could always tell where our family is, because we’ll all be singing.”
Later, at Johnstown Catholic, she discovered a love for forensics and the excitement of crafting and challenging arguments with her debate team who competed against local schools and who remain close friends, 65 years later.
The summer of her junior year marked Sister Rita’s first trip to Baden and a surprising admission. She’d come with several other young women for the reception of Sisters entering the congregation. As they were leaving, she crossed paths with Sister Mary (Robert) Morgan, a former teacher, who was thrilled to see her and apologetic they hadn’t been able to visit. “That’s alright Sister, I’m coming back to stay,” Sister Rita said. She waved goodbye and the whole way home, thought: Why did I say that?
It wasn’t until her senior year that she named the desire to become a Sister of St. Joseph. She remembers Father Grenader, her forensics coach, asking why she kept signing up for but never attending retreats. “Finally, he said: ‘Rita, do you want to go to Baden to be one of the Sisters?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Just like that, yes. He said, ‘Go do something about it.’”
On September 8, 1961, at age 17, Rita Concepción María – born on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – entered the congregation. “The hardest thing was taking off my forensics pin that you got when you won tournaments,” she recalls. That, and removing the earrings she’d worn since she was a child. But, as hesitancy crept in, so did comfort, in the form of Sister Crescentia Mulvihill, who welcomed her as a fellow Johnstown native.
Sister Rita began her ministry as a high school Spanish teacher at St. Raphael in Pittsburgh and later at Mon Valley Catholic in Monongahela. It was during this time that questions and doubts began to surface in her heart – a fear that she couldn’t be like the Sisters she admired. She requested a leave of absence from the congregation, and the next day, stepped off a plane in Acapulco, Mexico, to stay with her Aunt. “It was like I had to reclaim my soul.”
After months of prayer, reflection, and reconnecting with her cultural roots, Sister Rita began to feel her soul was whole again. Still, she struggled with a sense of belonging. She was different, culturally and personality-wise, from many other Sisters. “I just couldn’t see how I could fit,” she admitted.
Toward the end of her one-year leave, she was invited to a 30-day retreat with Sister Janet Mock. “For 28 of the 30 days, I cried… I didn’t know what it was I needed to do; I just knew I wanted to be a Sister,” she recalls. “The reason I left was I didn’t think that I fit. And when Janet found out I was thinking of leaving, she said, ‘but if you leave, we won’t stretch.’”
Through the retreat, Sister Rita slowly began to see her identity and culture as gifts that she brought to the congregation and to the world. She recalls soulful moments, like dancing in front of the altar in the chapel in the middle of the night and up the snowy tree-lined pathway when no one else saw her. Realizing that “God made me as I am,” she began to accept that she could be both free-spirited and a Sister, finding freedom in God’s love and experiencing the grace of self-acceptance.
Today, Sister Rita brings that love, understanding, and empathy to her decades-long work as a public defender where she counsels and advocates for young people carrying pain. After years representing adults, she’s worked exclusively with children in the juvenile justice system since 1999 as a trial attorney in the Allegheny County Public Defender’s Office.
“I love the children, she says. “They are so in need of a listening heart.” Her mission is to help them see their own worth while providing for their legal needs, listening intently to their stories, their pain, and their fears. “You can’t change all that’s happened already,” she tells them. “But we can make a choice today of how we’re going to go forward.”
She recalls the story of a young woman, eight months pregnant, who feared the juvenile delinquency facility’s conditions and work requirements were endangering her baby. The woman told her friends she was “going to tell her lawyer, Miss Rita, and Miss Rita will care.” When Sister Rita learned of the situation, she worked with the judge to ensure the soon-to-be mother would be exempt from physical labor.
“I can’t change their lives,” she says, “They have to make those choices, but I can be the person who cares.”
Send a note to Sister Rita or make a donation in her honor.