Sister Barbara Ann Desiano and her twin brother, Fr. Frank DeSiano, CSP

Theirs was a 1950s Catholic family.

The elder Frank DeSiano took his four children to 9 a.m. Sunday Mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan and then occupied them with hours-long trips to places like Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. This gave his wife, Angelina, time to whip up a big Italian Sunday dinner after she returned from an earlier Mass.

Those were days the two oldest DeSiano children, twins Father Francis Patrick (known as Frank) and Patricia Frances (now Sister Ann Barbara), look back on with smiles as they reminisce about how they each discovered their religious vocation.

Young Frank found his vocation early, leaving the family home in the Amsterdam Housing Projects located near St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Manhattan at age 14 to attend the Paulist Fathers high school seminary in Baltimore. Inspired by the history of the Paulist Fathers who founded Church of St. Paul the Apostle and the parish school he attended, Paulist preaching and mission appealed to the young man.

“I cannot exaggerate what an impression [the Paulists] made on me … who, either in past reputation or in their ministry, could touch thousands by their words,” said Father DeSiano, who will celebrate 40 years as a Paulist priest in 2012. “I’ve always been drawn by the ‘mission’ aspect of the Paulists – to bring the power of the Catholic Church to those who do not know the faith and whose lives would be so much richer if they did.”

No one was shocked when Frank entered the seminary, according to his twin Sister Ann Barbara.

“There was an understanding that the priesthood might be something he could think about,” said Sister Patricia, who is older than her brother by six minutes but took a little longer to hear and answer the call to religious life.

The inklings of a religious vocation came to Patricia as a junior at Immaculata High School in Manhattan, and solidified during her senior year. She found the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary who taught her were “bright, funny, life-loving and creative group of women.”

“I thought, ‘If these people can find such vitality in this lifestyle, it is worth exploring,” said Sister Patricia. “You have no idea what you are getting in to until you are in it. You just have to get in it.”

Father DeSiano, who kept in touch with his family as best he could given the expense in those days of long distance phone calls, never considered his twin sister would become a Sister.

“I was as surprised as anyone when she went in to religious life,” he said.

So Patricia Frances would become Sister Ann Barbara DeSiano, IHM. After her final vows, Sister Ann Barbara taught English in various high schools for 14 years.

“I absolutely loved teaching, but the 70’s were challenging years for women in religious life,” she recalled. “At that time I was living with several sisters who were engaged in parish ministry and gradually I found myself thinking of a ministerial change. They were kind enough to let me tag along for parish events and assist in some at-home retreat work they were doing so that I might get a better feel for the work. After two years of much discerning, I asked to change ministries.”

Sister Ann Barbara has since ministered at three parishes in Queens, N.Y., that she describes as 15 minutes apart in geography but entirely different worlds. St. Clement Pope is a small, African-American parish while St. Bartholomew is very multicultural with a large Latino population. Her current assignment is at Our Lady of Mercy, a mid-size parish with a growing Asian population where her ministerial involvement is diverse.

“What I love about parish ministry is that I get to experience the faith of the people I serve in very deep ways and am always challenged to live out my own commitment with integrity and joy,” Sister Ann Barbara said. “I have a rich texture to my life that only parish work can provide and the example of fine leadership, compassion and prayer with the priests I have been blessed to work with over the years.”

Just like his sister, Father DeSiano is also passionate about parish-level ministry, especially evangelization.

Father DeSiano’s first assignment took him to St. Philip Neri Church in Portland, Ore., where he developed favorably received courses on Catholicism. His first book, “Searching for Sense” came out of this experience.

He returned to St. Paul in New York, to serve as pastor and to begin welding together the ideas of “missionary” and “parish.” These notions further developed during an educational sabbatical at Boston University, where he wrote a thesis on parish-based evangelization. Father DeSiano then spent six years in Washington, D.C., helping to form parish evangelization teams, developing evangelization strategies, serving as a consultor on evangelization to the U.S. Bishops and helping to write “Go and Make Disciples – A Plan and Strategy for Evangelization in the United States.” It was work that was “both the flowering of earlier seeds and also seedlings for future ministry,” he said.

Elected president of the Paulist Fathers in 1992, Father DeSiano continued to speak on evangelization during his term, and also conducted parish missions and offered presentations for dioceses, parishes and other organizations. He continued to write, and authored “Presenting the Catholic Faith,” “Yes, I Can Believe,” “Creating the Evangelizing Parish,” “The Evangelizing Catholic,” “Discovering My Experience of God” and “The 7 Commandments of Discipleship.”

The year 2002 saw Father DeSiano return to parish life as pastor of Old St. Mary’s Church in Chicago. It was there he developed the Chicago Institute of Evangelization in concert with the evangelization committee of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Father DeSiano again found himself in a leadership role with the Paulists when he was asked to be the first consultor of the order in 2006, a post that took him home to New York City. He now serves as president of Paulist Evangelization Ministries in Washington, D.C., which seeks to “reach the unreached in faith,” with a particular emphasis on those who do not have an active faith life.

“The Paulists, obviously, are part of my stem cell system, so I could not escape their vision even if I tried,” joked Father DeSiano. “But what makes the Paulists such a great congregation is the way the vision is deepened and renews by our openness to life’s experience and to culture. There is always a new idea, a new direction, a new slant, a renewed passion. A religious vocation is something you discover and then continually rediscover as you go along.”

With both twins having parish-based ministerial experience in addition to their religious vocation, Sister Ann Barbara said her brother is a source of support and provides a great example.

“He always has suggestions for any questions I may face in the parish arena since his own experience is so wide spread and he has pastored parishes with great success. Still, bottom line, he is my brother first and foremost and it is as a brother that I love and value
him the most.”

Father DeSiano said the religious vocation he shares with his twin sister is definitely something special.

“Our other siblings [a younger brother and sister] don’t have the same understanding of our vocation,” he said. “We have an understanding of what community life is, what the responsibilities are, the obstacles and the moments for celebration.”