By Associated Press
Buffalo, NY – Police searched Monday for a missing Catholic nun who is the founder and director of a residence for former prison inmates.
Sister Karen Klimczak, 62, was last seen Friday night at Bissonette House, where she lives. The residence is at the same address as Hope House, the Buffalo halfway house she founded in 1989 for non-violent ex-convicts.
Klimczak also was seen earlier Friday evening at a parish church were people were decorating for Easter Sunday. Church members became concerned when she missed several appointments Saturday and failed to show up for Easter services.
The nun is described as 5-feet-6, 120 pounds, with short gray hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers.
"We are just trying to be as confident as we can and also being as realistic," Sister Elizabeth Savage, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph, told The Buffalo News in Monday's editions "Karen was certainly a woman of hope and woman of service and a woman of nonviolence."
In a statement issued Sunday, Bishop Edward U. Kmiec of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo said: "We are praying that Sister Karen is safe and will soon be home. She is a woman of God who has selflessly given spiritual guidance and her time to many of those who have been cast off by society."
Buffalo police called her disappearance "very suspicious" and said investigators are proceeding under the assumption that foul play could be involved.
Bissonette House is named for Father Joseph Bissonette, who was murdered during a 1987 robbery.