GREENSBURG — Felician Sister Mary Anita Bienia is moving to Europe and a new assignment. At age 70, she is ending decades of working in hospital laboratories to begin a new ministry — making and passing out sandwiches to hungry people in Rome.

"I think it’s God’s will," she said. "I don’t understand this whole thing — how I did it — but it sounded like the urgent thing to do. Maybe God is calling me there."

Sister Anita, a native of Mount Pleasant, has been a Felician sister since 1963. The order focuses on teaching and health care, and she has worked in X-ray and other hospital labs. For the past 11 years, she has been in the hematology and chemistry departments of the laboratory at Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital. She also works at St. Anne Home in Greensburg, where she resides.

It was satisfying work, she said, but an e-mail that she received on Dec. 22 set a whirlwind of change in motion. The message was from Sister Mary Barbara Ann Bosch, minister general of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice, at the order’s generalate in Rome. She was seeking someone to take over what had become a full-time ministry feeding from 50 to 100 individuals and families who come to the convent daily asking for food.

The job description asked for a sister who will not only represent Christ at the gate, but also who is "physically able to walk well."

According to Sister Anita’s pedometer, she walks nearly 20,000 steps a day. She walks around the hospital before her shifts, she walks when she prays and she walks when she reads.

"Every step, I give it up to the Lord," she said. "Walking is so healthy. I also drink a lot of water and take my apple a day to keep the doctor away, and I don’t trust just one, so I eat two, and I don’t eat between meals."

She called her sisters in Rome five minutes after reading the e-mail plea.

"I said I can make sandwiches," she said. "You can’t mess up with them."

Her request to go to Rome went through the required channels in her order, and one night soon after, she received word that she got the job.

"Besides," she said with a laugh, "I was the only one who volunteered to do it."

Sister Anita will leave for Rome Feb. 27.

"Feeding the hungry is one of the corporal works of mercy, and it’s such an honor to do it," she said. "I will be making the sandwiches and tending to all the requests at the gate. You have to get up when they ring the bell, so I might have to sleep with my boots on."

Felician Sister Bernice Marie Fiedor, the retired administrator at St. Anne, was at the generalate for 12 years. She said people were "constantly ringing the doorbell."

"This will really be a different ministry for Sister Anita, and it’s something that she really has the heart for," she said. "She loves doing something for the poor, or for anybody. She is that kind of very special person, and she is going to do a lot of good when she goes to Rome."

Barb Day, the system manager of the Excela Health laboratory, called Sister Anita "an exemplary employee" the staff is going to "desperately miss."

"I believe that she has a true calling to go to Rome," Day said, "but who’s going to pray for me now?"