Born in Buffalo, New York, Sister Julianne’s family relocated to Puerto Rico when she was seven years old. She stayed there through college at the Inter-American University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in History.

After graduation, she joined her twin sister in Montgomery County, Maryland, and worked at the Puerto Rican Research and Resources Center.  After five years there, she decided to “check out Florida” and opened a gift and craft shop—Julianne’s Sunshine Shop—in Winter Park. 

Although she had been raised in the church and had done some volunteer work while living in Maryland, she became active when she met Sister Natalie DeLuca and Sister Teresa Mary Dolan, who were both affiliated with Annunciation Church in Altamonte Springs, Florida.  She began helping Sister Natalie in the religious education department and, through Sister Teresa, became involved in RCIA, the program for adults looking to become Catholics.

Meanwhile, on the professional level, she made a change:  “I got into the banking business and was involved with trust banking and trust security for five years in Orlando.”  Meanwhile, she was becoming more and more involved with the Annunciation parish.

She had thought about joining a religious community many years earlier, but says, “I always thought, ‘No, I need to have more experiences.’ But the idea came back to me from time to time, and I knew that I had never fully explored the possibility of religious life.”

It was while she was on retreat that her thoughts became clear: “There was construction work going on,” she recalls.  “A constant knock, knock, knocking of hammers; this became very symbolic for me.  I realized that God had been knocking and I had never answered the call.”

She decided that, in her late 30s, she should “get on with it” and she entered the Community in September of 1987.  In her early years she did pastoral ministry in North Carolina and Arizona.  In 1990 she began working in the field of maternity services and adoption in New York City.  She also worked at a leading New York hospital nursing home for AIDS patients at a time when there was no cure.

For the last 15 years, she has been the Pastoral Associate at Our Lady of Fatima in Baltimore. Her ministry has included the Geriatrics Department at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital, adult day care, and the expansion of a bereavement program that attracts participants from other parishes.