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Your Catholic Neighbor: Ellen Sweeny
A true advocate for the elderly
By Joyce Coronel, The Catholic Sun
November 1, 2007
The first thing one notices about Ellen Sweeny is how much she laughs and how the people she helps in her job as a social worker seem to love her.
The lifelong St. Mary’s Basilica parishioner works for the City of Phoenix’s PACE program assisting the elderly.
She also spends two nights a week at the Ronald McDonald house, a temporary home for parents whose children have had to travel to Phoenix for medical care.
One of seven children, Sweeny grew up in central Phoenix and attended St. Mary’s elementary school and high school. She graduated from Arizona State University’s School of Social Work in 1985 and has always considered her career to be the natural fulfillment of her passion for the sanctity of life.
“Initially I wanted to work in adoptions, but my graduation coincided with a dearth in children,” she said.
Between her work with the elderly and helping families, she sees her career centering around the “womb-to-tomb” philosophy of the pro-life movement. “It’s a grounding philosophy that has always colored everything I do,” she said.
At the PACE program — an acronym for Phoenix Advocacy and Counseling for the Elderly — Sweeny spends the bulk of her time doing four to five home visits a day.
Working out of the Deer Valley office, she travels to the residences of senior citizens who need help with everything from sorting out confusing Medicare issues to minor home repairs, or — as is rather common during the summer months — a crisis with utilities.
Sweeny sees her work as the fruit of living out the Beatitudes and Catholic social teaching.
“It’s the central message of Christianity: What you do to the least of these you do to Me,” she said. “I see the transcendent spiritual nature of it. It’s kind of like a vocation.”
Some of her day revolves around the activities that are planned for the elderly at the senior center where she works. The city operates 17 such sites, but at the Goelet Beuf Senior Center where Sweeny operates, it was a round of bingo on a recent Wednesday morning that captured the visitors’ attention.
As the game ended, Sweeny entered the hall where she was greeted by the smiles and hugs of those who have come to love her after her more than 11 years of service at the facility.
Out of all the experiences she’s had over the years assisting elderly residents, it was a 94-year-old woman’s plight that stands out in Sweeny’s mind.
The woman’s nephew was holding her as a virtual prisoner in her own home, stealing her Social Security and taking out loans and cash advances.
“Because we were working with people who need rent assistance, we got the call. He was threatening to kill her if she told anyone. He was involved in Wicca [a pagan religion] and had ceremonial knives,” she said.
Sweeny’s efforts resulted in an order of protection that forced the nephew to leave. Two days later, the woman was able to relocate with a niece in Colorado.
“To me, that was the most unusual but the most satisfying case I’ve had in all my years. We were essentially the lifeline,” she said. “The city backed me up in getting her out of there.”
What do you like best about being Catholic?
It’s the incomparable gift of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. It’s the source and summit of our Catholic worship.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
How many people get to perform corporal works of mercy for a living? This is much of what social work entails. You’re meeting people at their needs and assisting them in finding solutions for their problems.
How does your work help you grow in faith?
Recognizing at the core the sacredness of what most would view as a profane or secular job. God has willed to need us in the fulfillment of His designs. He’s entrusted His work to us and He’s waiting for us to do it. We’re often blind to our mission: we don’t realize that our life stopped being profane the minute we were baptized and that it became a liturgy, an office, an apostolate.
If you could meet one person, living or dead, whom would you want to meet?
C.S. Lewis. I love his writing. I love how he can take the abstract and make it tangible and take subjects that are hard to get your mind around and make them understandable.
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