'FORGIVE' WAS BYWORD OF MURDERED NUN

Her Life's Work Was Devoted To Ex-Convicts

BUFFALO, N.Y. . Sister Karen Klimczak moved quick as the wind off
Lake Erie. In a day she might race from counseling ex-offenders at
the halfway house she ran to praying at a murder victim's vigil, then
head to the youth center she founded before donning a clown suit and
bouncing joyously through a senior center.

She was 62 years old, 5 feet, 2 inches tall and just over 100 pounds,
tireless and in near-constant motion. In western New York, they
called her Mother Teresa in fast forward. Without a trace of
hyperbole, they called her a gift from God.

Now people stumble over their words as they try to speak of her in
the past tense. That's in part because the tragedy that befell Sister
Karen over Easter weekend still seems too impossible to be real. And
in part because this nun, who left a trail of forgiveness behind like
footprints, seems as present now in death as she ever was in life.

Raised in a deeply religious home near Buffalo, Karen Klimczak
entered the convent after high school, earned a master's degree in
pastoral study from Loyola University Chicago in the early 1980s and
spent several years as teaching in Buffalo.

A summer of volunteer work at a state prison revealed in her a
profound sympathy for people who had served time, setting a course
for her life's work.

"She felt they were forgotten," said one of her sisters, Mary Lynch.
"She felt they never had a chance unless somebody was there to help them."

In 1985, Sister Karen opened HOPE House, a "Home of Positive
Experience" for ex-offenders. With a mix of toughness and motherly
compassion, it became one of the more successful after-prison
programs in the region.

Men would return and invite her to their weddings They would ask her
to be godmother to their children. Yet Sister Karen insisted it was
she who benefited from the work.

"HOPE isn't for men who have been incarcerated," she said in a
videotaped 1987 interview with the Diocese of Buffalo. "HOPE is for
me. For me to grow, for me to see brokenness in the eyes and in the
heart of an individual. And when the brokenness is there, you can see
God, and God can become real. And he's become more real for me
through HOPE than any other experience."

On Good Friday, Sister Karen attended a service at Sts. Columba and
Brigid Church. The scripture focused on the final words of Jesus as
he hung on the cross at Calvary, including: "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do." After Mass, she drove to the
red-brick halfway house. Several years ago she had changed the name
from HOPE House to Bissonette House in honor of the Rev. A. Joseph
Bissonette, a friend murdered there in 1987 by two teenagers who had
come to him seeking help.

Sister Karen considered it important that the site of Bissonette's
murder be a place of love and forgiveness. Morning prayers are said
each day in the ground-floor room where he was killed.

At about 9 p.m., Sister Karen was on the third floor chatting with
Robert Walker, an ex-offender who had been there almost a year. She
brought up the home's newest resident, Craig Lynch, a convicted car
thief nine days out of prison.

Walker recalled the nun saying that Lynch, who had battled drug
addiction for more than half of his 36 years, seemed ready for a
fresh start. Before leaving Walker's room, Sister Karen spoke with
her usual optimism. "I think Craig's doing well," she said. "I think
he's going to be all right."

One floor down, police say, Lynch had just passed Sister Karen's
room, noticed the door open and saw the cell phone sitting by her
computer. He later told police he walked in to take the cell phone,
hoping he could sell it to buy crack cocaine and cigarettes.

Sister Karen was reported missing when she had not been seen by
Saturday afternoon. Concern grew as Easter weekend continued, and
when she didn't come to Easter Mass, most suspected foul play.

By Monday evening, after several hours of interrogation, as his
stories and alibis crumbled, Lynch confessed to killing Sister Karen
when she came into her room, and he and led police to where he had
buried her body.

Rev. Roy Herberger, who had known Sister Karen more than 20 years,
officiated at her funeral, and referred to the words of the Good
Friday service eight days earlier: Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.

"If one word would be synonymous with Karen, it would be the word
'forgive,'" Herberger said. "And she would be saying that about
Craig. She would be the first person to say, 'Father, forgive him, he
really doesn't know what he's doing.'"

Rather than turn people against ex-offenders like Lynch, Sister
Karen's death has brought greater commitment to the work she did.
Donations have come in to Bissonette House to ensure it keeps
running. Volunteers have come forward.

"If she would have known that her death would have had such a ripple
effect, she would've said, 'So be it,'" said Sister Roz Rosolowski, a
chaplain at Attica prison and longtime friend of Sister Karen's.
"What keeps a lot of us going is the drive to continue this work in
her name. And it has just caught fire."