May 22, 2012 1:23 PM

For the last 10 years, Centro Corazon de Maria has helped Latino immigrants in Hampton Bays learn English, gain parenting skills and get access to food, health care, education and legal assistance.

The nonprofit organization, run by three nuns out of the Church of St. Rosalie on Montauk Highway, celebrated its 10-year anniversary on April 15 with a visit from Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, who held a mass that day.

Sister Frances Lane and Sister Mary Lang started the organization after their order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, asked them to aid the immigrant population in Hampton Bays and the surrounding communities. Sister Mary Beth Moore, of the Sisters of Charity of Halifax, joined them two years ago. Funding comes 
from the Religious of the 
Sacred Heart of Mary, Sister Lane said.

When they started up, the sisters’ first task was to make inroads with the Latino community, Sister Lang explained. She and Sister Lane visited the Southampton Town Police Department, the Hampton Bays School District and other institutions to make themselves known.

“In the beginning, we used to wait around wondering if anyone would come in,” Sister Lang recalled during a recent interview in the organization’s basement office at St. Rosalie’s community center.

In the last 10 years, the Latino immigrant population has soared, along with the sisters’ reputation in the immigrant community. The organization now serves an estimated 500 people per year, many of them women and young mothers.

The sisters acknowledged that many of the immigrants they help are undocumented, but said their affiliation with the church and their focus on humanitarian service keeps them out of the political fray. “They appreciate what we’re doing for the immigrant community,” Sister Lane said.

Some of the immigrants who seek out help have been in the United States for 25 years or longer, and many have children here, the sisters said.

The organization focuses mainly on education, bringing Cornell Cooperative Extension and Suffolk County Department of Health Services workshops in prenatal care, parenting and nutrition to Hampton Bays. All classes come with free day care, allowing mothers to attend. In times of hardship, the nuns also help families access food stamps or food pantries.

They also organize English classes for immigrants through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES, at the parish’s community center and at Hampton Bays Middle School on Ponquogue Avenue. Sister Lang is a teacher in the program.

Since many of the immigrants are illiterate in their own language and do not qualify for the BOCES class, Sister Moore oversees a preparatory class in basic language skills. People from the community volunteer as tutors to the 15 or so women who take the twice-weekly class, the sisters said. Sister Lane thanked St. Rosalie’s Parish for offering space and support over the years.

All three of the sisters are bilingual and spent time in South or Central America. Sister Lane, who grew up in the Bronx and acts as coordinator of the organization, spent 13 years in Colombia. Sister Lang, a Manhattan native, spent four years in Mexico. And Sister Moore, who hails from Albertson in Nassau County, worked in Peru for 10 years.

Both the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and the Sisters of Charity of Halifax are international orders of nuns, and Sisters Lane, Lang and Moore have lived all over the country, as well as abroad. Sister Lane’s previous assignment was in Rome, for example.

In addition to helping immigrants navigate educational, health care and legal systems, Centro Corazon de Maria has become a place where they can open up about their problems, the sisters said.

“If people come with personal problems, what we do is listen,” said Sister Moore, who is a member of the Southampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force and the Hampton Bays-based outreach group Neighbors in Support of Immigrants. “Listening to people with love and patience is very, very healing. They just share from the heart within two minutes, because, really, there’s no one else.”