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(Editor's note: St. Mary's parish in Amsterdam recently honored Sister Agnes Clare Vitale, a Franciscan Sister of the Atonement, for 40 years of service in Amsterdam and her 75th jubilee in religious life. She is still in active ministry.)

It's just another day at work for Sister Agnes Clare Vitale, SA, a religious educator in Amsterdam for 40 years. A Brooklyn native, she entered the convent and took her vows in 1937.

"It was a great missionary age," she explained, remembering a sign in a childhood classroom: "And these shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth."

That quote from the biblical book of Revelation inspired her life: "I wanted to be there when the saints go marching in," she said. When she picked up literature for religious orders, a brochure from the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement caught her eye.

Sister Agnes served her novitiate at Graymoor in Garrison, N.Y. She briefly taught kindergarten near Plattsburgh, then received her first major assignment: a convent in Wales.

She never made it. War had broken out, and plans to go over on the Queen Mary were canceled when the cruise ship became part of the fleet of Great Britain. Sister Agnes and four peers took another ship - this one, to Mussolini's Italy.

Her parents had come from Italy, but Sister Agnes had grown up in the U.S. and her command of Italian was minimal. In addition, when the sisters arrived in Rome, their convent had yet to be built - but the property belonged to the Vatican, and Pope Pius XII had taken a special interest in assisting them.

Conditions at first were primitive. The nuns shared a one-room apartment, cooking on charcoal fires. The Mother Superior knew less Italian than Sister Agnes and relied on her to tell a woman who sought their help not to worry about feeling physical weakness. Sister Agnes came up with, "Mother says, 'Do not worry. You are just a little devil.'"

Hordes of poor people came to the the sisters begging for food; plus, war orphans needed care. Food and water were scarce. There were no linens for the army cots they used, so the sisters walked to the Vatican to get material. They were given old papal banners.

Nearly all the children were sick, coming from bombed-out cities and concentration camps, and were emotional wrecks. The Vatican established a clinic, treating thousands for typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and malaria. The doctor was an Austrian Jewish woman who had been made a citizen of the Vatican and was allowed to travel outside the walls.

"Pope Pius XII was a saint," Sister Agnes declared. When she got to meet the pope at an audience with the king and queen of Italy, she tried to say in Italian, "Long live the Pope," but instead said, "Long live the mush" - "la pappa" instead of "il Papa."

Three children arrived from Montecassino with their mother. They were barefoot, in nightshirts, their bodies covered with lice-infested sores. There was no room, no food, no medicine.

"Tell them to find somewhere else," the beleaguered superior told Sister Agnes.

"If you don't take my children, I will kill myself," the mother replied.

Sister Agnes "requisitioned" precious olive oil from the kitchen to treat the children's sores. She hid them for a week: "I decided I would wait until the superior was in a good mood before telling her."

One of the children died of tuberculosis and was laid in a potter's field. Years later, surviving orphans took up a collection to buy a headstone. The mother was never seen again.

According to Sister Agnes, the first place in Rome to be bombed was the convent. It was near an anti-aircraft emplacement that had been harassing British reconnaissance planes, and one plane that was hit dropped its bombs as a safety precaution, though not deliberately.

Sister Agnes had snuck out of the neighborhood bomb shelter to sleep in her own bed when the fireworks broke out. Her superior ran to get her just as a blast knocked both of them into the hall. Her bed now lay under a pile of rubble.

Each day, she would walk to the Vatican for bread, passing through German Gestapo guarding the entrances. Not once did anyone suspect she was an American citizen; at times, she even faced off with Germans who demanded the use of the convent for their soldiers. She would point to the sign indicating it was sovereign Vatican land, and it worked.

And she rarely returned to the convent with any bread, as starving Romans would entreat her for a crust all the way home.

Then the aqueducts were bombed and the municipal water supply ended. The sisters would find people with wells and haul the water back to the convent. The untreated water led to dysentery.

On June 5, 1944, the American Army liberated Rome.

"It was a wonderful day! They were all drunk!" Sister Agnes recalled. All they could drink was wine, and the people of Rome were willing to share what they had. Sister Agnes remembered joyous children who rode on the shoulders of the GIs, learning the delights of chewing gum.

Later, the sisters would take the children for recreation to the beaches at Anzio, where Germans and Americans had fought for months. The sisters would check the beach for unexpended ordnance; now and then, the children would stumble upon the shallow grave of a dead soldier.

Sister Agnes remained in Rome after the war, teaching the people how to vote - which angered the Communists, who had been instructing illiterate Italians that their party symbol, a picture of Garibaldi with a beard, was St. Joseph.

She was threatened with death by a Communist mob. There were no police at the time, and only the intervention of the army saved them.

The next day, one of the women from the mob came to the sisters for help. Sister Agnes gave her a piece of her mind - but helped her.

Sister Agnes came down with tuberculosis from caring for the little girl she had hidden. She made a pilgrimage to the shrine at Loreto and witnessed miraculous cures, but refused to pray for a miracle, feeling others needed it more. Still, the disease disappeared: "I guess the Lord needed me back in the vineyard."

In 1952, after 13 harrowing years away, she returned to America. A host of teaching assignments awaited her. At the Actor's Chapel in New York City, she taught children from the cast of "The King and I." After that it was New Jersey, then Schenectady and Schuylerville.

In Lake Placid, she played the organ for Sunday Mass. One parishioner dominated the singing. "You're just going to have to tone it down. It's not a performance," she admonished the singer - Kate Smith.

Eventually, Sister Agnes became superior of St. Michael's Convent in Amsterdam, then coordinated the city's religious education programs. She moved into her own apartment, where she remains to this day.

In 1980, she turned to coordinating faith formation for St. Mary's parish in Amsterdam. "It's been a very satisfying career," she said, pointing to a battered wool jacket hanging on the back of her door: "It's made from the cloth of my old habit. I use it when I go pick apples."

She calls her vocation "wonderful."

"It has a lot of challenges, but you can be sure when the Lord calls you, He will say, 'Come. Because I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I needed knowledge and you helped me.' You'll never have to worry about your future and you are working in the Lord's vineyard."

(Mr. Going is an Amsterdam attorney; his wife, Mary, teaches at St. Mary's Institute in Amsterdam.)

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