Sister Demetria Smith reflects with joy on her 70 years of serving in Uganda, the U.S.
Sister Demetria Smith smiles during a Mass on Aug. 17 in the St. Augustine Home for the Aged chapel in Indianapolis honoring her 70th jubilee as a member of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
At 92, Sister Demetria Smith is the embodiment of gentleness and joy.
Those qualities shined on Aug. 17 during a Mass at St. Augustine Home for the Aged in Indianapolis as the member of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa renewed the religious vows she first professed 70 years ago.
“I’m just beside myself,” said a beaming Sister Demetria at a reception after the Mass, surrounded by family and friends. “I’m just very thankful to God for all that has been.”
There is much “that has been” in a vocation that took her from Indianapolis to Europe to Africa to Washington and back to Indianapolis.
Twenty-six of those 70 years were spent overseas. And more than 16 of those years abroad were spent ministering as a nurse and midwife in the East African country of Uganda—even during the dangerous and deadly eight-year reign of dictator Idi Amin, whom history dubbed the “Butcher of Uganda.”
Her seven decades in service to the Lord stem from an upbringing as the second of nine children in a family “very much” rooted in Catholicism.
‘One little photo’
Sister Demetria was born in Indianapolis on Aug. 7, 1932. Her parents, Archie and Bettie Smith, named their daughter Catherine.
The Smiths grew up near St. Vincent Hospital—then located near downtown Indianapolis—where Archie worked as a chauffeur.
It was through the Daughters of Charity sisters who operated the hospital that Archie was introduced to—and was later baptized into—the Catholic faith.
“When he met my mom, she fell in love with the faith, too,” Sister Demetria said. “We prayed the family rosary every day, and we [kids] all had 12 years of Catholic education.”
It was while attending the former St. Bridget School in Indianapolis that she first felt the call to serve in Africa.
“They didn’t say much about Africa in school back then,” Sister Demetria recalled. “They just showed us one little photo [in a geography textbook] of two little boys in an African town on the equator, and I said, ‘Oh, I want to go there and help the people in Africa!’ ”
But she also wanted to be a nurse, a desire that evolved during her years working at St. Vincent, said Sister Demetria.
“It was expensive, with such a large family, and it was expected that you would make a contribution to the family,” she explained. “We only had to go out our back door and run in the back of the hospital, so one of my sisters and I worked there washing dishes.”
As she came to know the religious sisters and learn about their work, “I knew I wanted to be a nurse,” she said.
‘Don’t forget us—we’re praying for you’
After graduating from the former St. Agnes Academy in Indianapolis in 1950, Sister Demetria took nursing-related classes at the former Indiana University extension in Indianapolis for two years while working as an assistant in the surgery unit at St. Vincent.
Enter the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (MSOLA).
“They had come to the hospital trying to recruit nurses to become sisters and serve in Africa,” Sister Demetria explained.
The religious women were staying with the Little Sisters of the Poor, then located near downtown Indianapolis. Her father drove the sisters there from the hospital.
“On the way, he said, ‘You know, my daughter is always talking about going to Africa, and she wants to be a nun,’ ” said Sister Demetria. “They said, ‘Oh! Tell her to come see us!’ And they stayed an extra day at the Little Sisters, and I went and talked to them.”
Sister Demetria recalled how, when MSOLA sisters were on a train that stopped in Indianapolis, “they would hop off real quick, find a phone and call to say, ‘Catherine, this is the Missionary Sisters. Don’t forget us—we’re praying for you!’
“When I think of how God planned that all through, I’m still amazed,” she said.
Sister Demetria served her postulancy and novitiate with the order in Belleville, Ill., beginning in 1952 and professed her first vows there on Aug. 15, 1954.
‘You wouldn’t believe it’
Her first two years as a religious sister were spent earning a practical nursing license in Ohio. Then, in August 1956, Sister Demetria said farewell to her loved ones and headed overseas.
Her first destination was Lyon, France, for a three-month crash-course in French, the official language of the religious order.
“God is good, because I don’t really have a problem learning a language,” said Sister Demetria, who would also become fluent in Lagunda and Swahili, two languages spoken in Uganda.
She then spent a year at the motherhouse in Algiers, Algeria, in North Africa, receiving further religious formation and practicing her French.
At long last, in January 1958, Sister Demetria was ready to begin her dream of serving in Africa as a nurse.
“I was supposed to go to Rhodesia,” she said, a region of south-central Africa now divided into the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. “But at that time apartheid was strong there, and they wouldn’t give me an entry permit.”
Instead, Sister Demetria was sent to Uganda, where she served as a nurse and midwife for more than 16 years.
“You wouldn’t believe it, but we had a community there that was just straight up the road from where those two boys were standing in that picture I saw” in her grade school textbook, she marveled.
Sister Demetria professed her final vows in Uganda on Aug. 15, 1960.
‘The Black White Sister’
When she first arrived in Uganda, Sister Demetria was the only Black woman among the sisters in her community there.
“You would think being Black like the people in Uganda would make them happy, but I was not received with open arms at all,” she recalled. “They said, ‘You’re Black like us—what do you think you can do for us?’ Because they thought sisters were only white, and white people were the ones with the money. They really didn’t trust me for a while.
“But eventually they did come to trust me, and they were wonderful to me afterward.”
They even gave Sister Demetria a special nickname.
“The Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa were known as the White Sisters because of their all-white habit,” she explained. With a broad grin, she added, “The people started calling me the Black White Sister.”
From 1962-1969, Sister Demetria spent time in England and the United States earning degrees as a registered nurse and as an accredited midwife.
Returning to Uganda, she worked at various hospitals as a nurse, training other nurses as well.
“Then came my public health nursing,” she said, when she and other registered nurses in her community “traveled out to villages and set up temporary clinics along the roadside. The roads were dusty. Sometimes we’d travel half a day in a lorry [truck] to get where we needed to go. On a busy day, we’d help as many as 200 people.”
Common issues included malaria, typhoid, pneumonia, dysentery, malnutrition, measles, snake bites, “and of course delivering babies,” a service that brought her true joy, Sister Demetria said.
The days were long, she admitted.
“We’d be up at 5 or 5:30 in the morning for prayer before Mass,” she recalled. “Then we’d work from
8 [a.m.] ‘til 7 [p.m.], then we’d say evening prayers and have a little time left over before we went to bed.”
But she loved her ministry and the Ugandan people she served.
They came to care for her, too. That sentiment especially came through starting on Jan. 25, 1971, the day that Ugandan army commander Idi Amin seized power of the government through a military coup.
‘It became so dangerous there’
“He was a big tyrant,” said Sister Demetria. “It was a difficult time. He came into power just brutally. It just became so dangerous there.”
In 2003, when CNN announced the death of Idi Amin, the news organization called his reign “one of the bloodiest in African history—earning Amin the nickname ‘Butcher of Uganda.’ ”
The New York Times noted that his “ruinous eight-year reign of terror encompassed widespread killing, torture and dispossession of multitudes.” Estimates of the number of people killed during Amin’s dictatorship range from 80,000 to 300,000 as he perpetrated genocide against certain Ugandan tribes.
“Soldiers would raid villages at night, so the villagers would come to our community’s boarding school to sleep then go back to their village in the morning.”
The soldiers came “several times” into her community, making it particularly dangerous for Sister Demetria with her dark skin.
“This was when you really saw that the people really cared for me,” she said. “They would hide me because if I was seen, there would be no time to explain, ‘She’s not one of the tribes.’ ”
But the danger did not deter Sister Demetria. She continued to minister in Uganda until early 1978, when Americans in the country were advised to leave.
She returned to Uganda later that year and served there through 1982.
‘It was like a Third World country’
Upon returning to the U.S., Sister Demetria spent two years working in the publications department of the Missionaries of Africa, an order of priests and religious brothers headquartered in Washington. She then served for a decade promoting the mission of and vocations to the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa.
After living away from Indianapolis for 33 years, Sister Demetria returned permanently to her hometown in 1995. Her order “allowed me to work for the Office of Missions” at the Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis “so at the same time I could take care of my aging parents.”
In her new role, Sister Demetria visited archdiocesan schools to raise awareness and funds for missions in Third World countries.
“I just shared my story of life in Africa and asked them to help the poor little children around the world,” she said. “And children are so generous, they are so good.”
Sister Demetria served in that role through 2008, then as a receptionist at the Catholic Center until she retired in 2013.
There was a one-week break, though, in September 2005, when she traveled to Mississippi. It was not for a vacation.
“There was an urgent call for nurses to go and help people displaced by Hurricane Katrina,” she explained. “I went and was assigned to help assess their medical needs.
“The area was so devastated,” she recalled, shaking her head at the memory. “It was like a Third World country—no water, no electricity. My heart especially broke when elderly people would tell me they had nowhere to go, no idea what was going to happen to them.”
‘The Lord has been so good to me!’
At 92, much in Sister Demetria’s life has come full circle.
She ministered near the Ugandan town in the photo she saw as a schoolgirl.
Just as the religious women who recruited her stayed with the Little Sisters of the Poor, Sister Demetria now enjoys their hospitality as a resident of their St. Augustine Home for the Aged, now on the northwest side of Indianapolis.
And next to the home is the same neighbor of Sister Demetria’s youth—St. Vincent Hospital (now known as Ascension St. Vincent), which also moved to the city’s northwest side.
Along her full-circle path, she met Pope Pius XII and Pope (now Saint) John XXIII and earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.
When asked what words come to mind when reflecting on her 70 years as a Missionary Sister of Our Lady of Africa, Sister Demetria responded in song with her characteristic joy: “He’s been so good, he’s been so good, the Lord has been so good to me!” †
