For many Catholics, the word missionary brings to mind a centuries-old image of a priest planting a cross in a foreign land and teaching, baptizing and celebrating Mass for its people. Or it may conjure up the slightly more modern image of women religious running a school in Africa or Latin America.

A rainy November evening finds three dozen people gathered for prayer at the Cabrini Center for Nursing in Manhattan’s East Village. They include Anthony Frarracci, who arrives early to help arrange the chairs in a circle, and Vita Santangelo, a wheelchair-bound native of Sicily whose recent 9

For 20 years, West Philadelphia’s St. Francis de Sales School was on the diocesan dole. Like many inner-city schools, it could not support itself with tuition and parish funds. Its principal, Sister Constance Marie Touey, I.H.M., feared a decade ago that St. Francis de Sales would suffer the f