CHAMPAIGN — Minette Sternke has a big dream.

She would like to see an office for deaf ministry established in the Diocese of Peoria, but she isn’t sitting back and waiting for someone else to do the work for the deaf community in central Illinois.

Already active at St. Patrick’s Parish in Urbana, Sternke continues to seek out the training that will allow her to make her dream come true.

In the meantime, she would be happy to have an interpreted Mass each Sunday at St. Patrick’s Church. Currently that happens at the noon Mass on the first and third Sundays of the month.

“What would be particularly nice is if each vicariate of the diocese was able to have an interpreted Mass on Sunday, because the deaf are there,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding them.”

STERNKE’S dream has some big support.

She was among 500 people — 100 of them deaf — who attended “Ephphatha: Deaf People in the Life of the Church” at the Vatican in November. The 12 recommendations that came out of the conference, which was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, included calls for each diocese to have at least one priest with the “necessary competencies” to minister to the deaf, that seminarians be encouraged to deepen their knowledge about deaf culture and language, and that catechetical programs take this population into account by involving deaf as well as hearing families.

“These recommendations are absolutely groundbreaking,” said Sternke, who was born hard of hearing and has been deaf since she was 13. She received a cochlear implant when she was 24, but relies on lip reading since it isn’t always possible to understand what she hears.

WHAT happened at the Vatican conference brought people to tears, Sternke said. bishops and bishops sitting there and listening very respectfully to deaf people honestly talking about their experience in the church and sharing their frustrations and their hopes and their dreams,” she explained. “You had a deaf-blind priest from London, who said the pope already knows eight different languages. He should learn sign language, too.”

One of the most important messages to come out of the conference is that deafness is not a medical condition that needs to be fixed, she emphasized.
“We don’t want to be fixed. We want to be accepted. We want to be included,” Sternke said.

She noted that this will happen when people start to view deafness as a culture with its own language, just as they would any other ethnic group: “Oh, you’re Hispanic or you’re Italian or you’re German.”

Father Joe Hogan, Sternke’s pastor at St. Patrick’s Parish, said it was important for Sternke to be at the Vatican conference. He provided half of the funding she needed and the other half came from the Catholic Office for the Deaf of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

She went to Rome as part of the 12-person delegation from Chicago.

“She is a wonderful person and she does help out in a lot of ways,” said Father Hogan. “She’s a sacristan. She helps to distribute Communion. She also helps with the signing at Mass.”

In addition, Sternke coordinates the interpreters for Mass and arranges workshops twice a year on a variety of topics.

“She has really stepped forward and is trying to coordinate deaf ministry in Diocese of Peoria. She’s interested in connecting people,” Father Hogan said. “We’ve done a lot of different things because of her.”

“It’s just amazing the way that everything just fell into place,” Sternke said. “All I had to do is say, ‘Yes, I will go,’ and then God took care of the rest.”

WHEN SHE isn’t advocating for deaf Catholics, Sternke is a bank examiner with the FDIC in Champaign. She just celebrated her 20th anniversary on the job and in central Illinois.

A native of Palmyra, Mo., she holds a degree in accounting from what is now known as Truman State University and the equivalent of a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Banking in Madison, Wis.

A believer in lifelong learning, Sternke also graduated from a four-year ministry formation program in the Archdiocese of Chicago last year that gave her pastoral training and additional background in liturgy and Scripture. This year she hopes to begin a master’s program in pastoral work with an emphasis in deaf ministry at St. Thomas University in Miami, Fla.

Editor’s note: For more information about the Vatican conference or ministry with the deaf at Patrick’s Parish in Urbana, contact Sternke at cudeafministry@gmail.com. To find out about coming events, read her blog at www.cudeafministry.typepad.com.