Theologian and spiritual director Annemarie Paulin-Campbell said Pope Francis has been a superb leader in many respects.

"However," she said, "when it comes to the issue of women's ordination, he seems to have already made a decision and does not seem open to discerning this issue."

There have been two Vatican commissions on women's ordination to the diaconate—in 2016 and 2020—but their reports have not been made public.

"Where is the transparency in this?" Ms. Paulin-Campbell asked. "It is difficult to feel that these have not simply been a patronizing attempt to pacify women."

She described "a deep sense of disillusionment that the church, on the one hand, is saying we need to be a synodal listening church, and has yet again, it seems, on the other hand, taken the diaconate for women off the table."

This "severely undermines the whole idea of listening and journeying together," Ms. Paulin-Campbell said.

High hopes for the Synod

There had been high hopes that the Synod on Synodality would address this issue concretely.

It was on the agenda for the first sitting in October 2023, but the discussion has been removed from the agenda for the second sitting of the synod, taking place this month.

Ms. Paulin-Campbell said that Pope Francis' remarks in an interview in May with U.S. media - reaffirming that women will never be ordained deacons - has "broken the last thread of hope many women were holding onto, and some have decided to leave now."

Biddy-Rose Tiernan, S.N.D.deN. (pictured), one of South Africa's best-known and loved religious women, said that she keeps asking why there seems to be such a deep-seated fear among the ordained men leading the Roman Catholic Church.

"Is it power? Is it insecurity? So many women are well-educated in theological, scriptural and historical matters."

"Jesus was revolutionary in his inclusion of all as disciples and friends," Sister Tiernan said. "I keep looking for reasons why there is this reluctance or fear and refusal because when I understand the reason behind any decision, I am better able to accept it."

"It would be interesting to hear what's behind Pope Francis' turnaround regarding [the discussion of the] diaconate for women," said Cathy Murugan, H.F. "I'm disappointed in Francis because I believed the synod was about discussing previously ‘unmentionable issues.'"

She said that she does not believe that God's call is "selective and prejudicial." Sister Murugan said that by excluding women from "responding fully to God's call…the church is doing violence to women."

Nontando Hadebe, a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians and Catholic Women Speak/Preach, said that women's equality is central to both continental and national priorities: "Africa leads the world with the highest number of female parliamentarians.

In Rwanda, for example, 60 percent are women." She said that "the church [in Africa] stands alone and disconnected."

"But there is also another facet to this," Ms. Hadebe said, referring to "the lack of a grassroots, visible, active movement among Catholic women in Africa for women's diaconate."

Many women in Africa are "disconnected and isolated from their global sisters within and outside the church advocating for women's rights."

African Catholic women found some consolation in comments made by Archbishop Buti Tlhagale, the archbishop of Johannesburg, South Africa, who warned bishops of southern Africa of a "deep down" anger among some women because "we have excluded them from ordination."

Prejudice against women

During a sermon at a plenary session of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference in August, Archbishop Tlhagale told the bishops that, despite the continuing overall support for the church among women, "priests and bishops don't necessarily have a good reputation [with them]."

Archbishop Tlhagale said that prejudice against women is a sin that should be included among others "when you are going to confess."

He pointed out that the church readily accepts women into its congregations, and they are "in fact, the majority in any community…. Yet, somehow, there is an inbuilt prejudice against women among the Catholic clergy, and I don't think we're going to do much about it now." Read more

• Russell Pollitt, S.J., is America Magazine's Johannesburg correspondent.

Not long ago, the Vatican's chief spokesman told 350 media professionals that Vatican media would still use art by Fr Marko Ivan Rupnik, 69, currently under investigation for accusations of abusing women religious.

Paolo Ruffini, 67, prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, defended the official use of art by the accused serial rapist at the annual meeting of the Catholic Media Association in Atlanta.

Other artists have offended too

In Rupnik's defense and by comparison, Ruffini asked the roomful of media professionals, "What about Caravaggio?"

What about him?

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a philandering reprobate who produced stunning art.

By an extraordinary use of light and dark, his paintings present a realistic view of what it means to be human, drawing the viewer into the deep human emotions he so realistically portrayed.

After killing a rich gangster, Ranuccio Tommasoni, in Rome — they fought over a gambling debt, or perhaps over a prostitute — Caravaggio remained on the run until he died in 1610.

Some say he was traveling to accept a pardon for his sentence of death.

Caravaggio's art influenced painters of the Baroque era and beyond, from Rubens to Rembrandt.

What's the difference?

Rupnik is no Caravaggio.

Caravaggio's paintings were commissioned for new churches and influential cardinals' palaces. Rupnik's mosaics adorn some 43 chapels or churches in Rome, and there are 231 works worldwide.

They are quite unusual. Some people find them ugly.

Rupnik's mosaics invariably present the human person as long-faced and big-eyed. Dismissive of nature, they evoke the work of a primary school student enamored of bright colors and glitter.

Aside from Rupnik's artistic departures from reality, his 20 or 30 accusers (so far) say he coerced them into sexual acts through spiritual and emotional abuse.

Their stories are horrifying.

One accuser said he abused multiple female members of the Loyola Community, which he founded in his native Slovenia, before decamping for Rome.

In Rome, he founded the Centro Aletti art institute in the early 1990s.

"Creative" abuse - and the victims

Rupnik's accusers say his sexual and spiritual abuse were essential to his creative processes.

The Society of Jesus — the Jesuit order Rupnik joined in 1973 — found the accusers' allegations credible and dismissed him in 2023 when he refused to abide by its restrictions.

He promptly attached himself to a Slovenian diocese. He continues to produce and sell his work.

Some places are considering removing his work, but the Vatican's Ruffini doesn't think that's a good idea.

Even so, there is precedent for covering existing art.

Mosaics commissioned in 1965 by Pope Paul VI in Rome's major seminary are now hidden by a false wall with floor-to-ceiling Rupnik depictions of Biblical scenes in bright reds, oranges and yellows.

That would be easy to take down.

But the question was not so much about removing Rupnik's mosaics as it was about his art's continued promotion in Vatican materials.

The Vatican maintains several Rupnik images on its websites, and Ruffini told the Atlanta assembly he had no intention of taking them down, saying removing art would not show "closeness" to Rupnik's victims.

What about the other victims, especially the female victims, of sexual and spiritual abuse by clerics around the world?

• First published by Religion News Service
• Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service.

Abuse and sexuality are taboo topics in Africa and women religious were reluctant to speak about their experiences, even in a safe environment with one of their own.

Women religious and priests

Sister Mary Lembo from Togo says she had to work for several years to convince religious women from Africa to talk to her about abuse priests inflicted upon them.

She eventually conducted interviews with nine affected women from five sub-Saharan African countries for a study she was undertaking.

For her own protection she did not name the countries where she worked.

Her subsequent dissertation "Sexual Abuse of Women Religious in Africa" was recently published in German.

"Abuse is a reality" Lembo says.

She explains that women religious are in close contact with priests.

They trust them and seek advice and help, which can lead to "asymmetrical relationships".

There is a certain naivety, Lembo said, adding that women in religious orders sometimes have the idea that a priest cannot hurt them.

Social taboo

Sexuality is still a social taboo in Africa.

Lembo says that is why to date the Church has hardly addressed the sex abuse problem in Africa.

She says she has also found nuns show little understanding of their abused sisters.

The abused women religious told her they were afraid and did not want to damage the Church's image.

To better protect women religious in future, Lembo wants the Church to introduce training programmes and preventative measures.

The Catholic aid organisation Missio, based in Aachen, Germany, is organising projects of this sort in African and Asian countries.

At Lembo's book launch, Missio President Dirk Bingener said abuse of women religious is systemic.

The case studies she highlighted are not isolated incidents, he said.

Source

• katholisch.de

Dr Rocio Figueroa made the comment after Pope Francis urged religious and consecrated women "to fight when, in some cases, they are treated unfairly, even within the church; when they serve so much that they are reduced to servitude, at times, by men of the church".

Figueroa - who has academic positions at both Auckland and Otago universities - says the challenges women religious face are inflicted by male clerics and, as a result of glaring internal challenges inside religious communities, need to be addressed.

The Church's concept of the vow of obedience is one such challenge, she says.

"Because it is ill-defined, it has enabled the abuse and mistreatment of religious women for decades.

"At the beginning, the vow of obedience began with the monks," she explains. They were obedient to their abbot, who represented God. By obeying him they were obeying God.

This definition of obedience has continued until today, Figueroa says.

It has resulted in complaints of psychological and spiritual abuse, about abuse of authority and toxic and militant cultures from many religious orders.

Religious are told to see this treatment as the will of God, the plan of God, and not to question it, she says.

"It's not just the problem of an abusive leader, it's a problem of how the system really enables abuse, in a way."

Figueroa would like to see religious obedience adopting a more open, cooperative connotation where people could speak freely.

"It will perhaps be messier, there will be more discussions, but it's human society, it's a family. You talk things through," she says.

Obedience "cannot be the submission of your will and thought".

Figueroa says the vow of obedience ought to be modelled on Jesus, who in the Gospels consistently says he is obeying his Father's will. He wasn't obeying other people.

"The obedience in the Gospel is an act of trust, an act of following God's commandments and following his love, so it's an obedience full of love and trust in a relationship between Jesus and God the Father".

However, this isn't the experience of many religious today. Most are women but the ones who write the documents determining what the religious vows mean in practice are always men.

Obedience and the Church's fundamental understanding of it "won't change until women have a voice in the definitions, in the teachings of the Church," Figueroa says.

This requires more than just a change in policy, it needs a systemic change away from the male-only world view.

"It would be important to have more women, to exercise authority in a woman's way, because the problem now is that we have a lot of women who are exercising authority in a patriarchal way," and that has caused problems, she says.

"Until we have another way of exercising authority, it will be very difficult.

"We have to create a new model for exercising authority".

Source

• CruxNow
• Image: iadc@unigre

Today Members of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) - who lead about 450,000 women religious around the world - are regularly invited to Vatican meetings at every level.

Sister Carmen Sammut, who is the UISG president, says "with the Vatican dicasteries, many things have changed" over the past six years. "We have ... been knocking on doors, and doors have been slowly opening" at the Synod of Bishops and at the meetings of Vatican congregations and councils.

The UISG vice president, Sister Sally Hodgdon, agrees, saying "Since Pope Francis, things have changed radically."

In her view, Vatican offices "are much more open, more user-friendly.

"It seems each year they listen a little more and follow through more on our ideas."

Hodgson says Vatican officials are realising more women have some of the skills and experience they need, while the sisters are realising how they can be "prophetic in different ways".

She cites the Way of the Cross meditations written by Sister Eugenia Bonetti for Francis's celebration at Rome's Colosseum.

Her prayerful, pious meditations explicitly condemned men who go to prostitutes, governments who have slammed their borders closed against migrants and refugees, and Catholics who prefer to look the other way in both situations.

Another example of women religious making waves at the Vatican came during the February summit on child protection.

At this, Sister Veronica Openibo told Francis and the world's bishops' conference presidents that the hypocrisy of Catholic leaders who claimed to be guardians of morality yet remained silent about clerical sexual abuse has left the Church's credibility in shambles.

Hodgson says the changing status of women also can be seen in the pope's interaction with participants at UISG plenary meetings. These are held every three years in Rome.

Francis addressed the first UISG plenary in 2013.

While the women were only in the audience at this meeting, this changed in 2016 when they were able to ask Francis questions.

These included questions about opportunities for women to preach; the importance of involving women in church decision-making, especially when the decisions impact women; and handling requests from bishops and priests looking for free labour from religious orders.

They also asked whether he'd be willing to set up a commission to explore the roles of the women identified as deacons and whether they were ordained or simply "blessed" in some way for service.

Within three months, Francis appointed six women and six men to a study commission to respond to these questions. In January this year two commission members said their work had been completed and a report was given to Francis.

Ongoing issues include the prospect of women voting in the Synods of Bishops, the sexual and psychological abuse women religious have suffered at the hands of priests, and UISG members' obligation to end the abuse of child and vulnerable adults in the Church and society.

Source

• Crux Now
• Image: Crux Now

"There are some priests and also bishops who have done it," the pontiff said last week in response to a journalist's question during his return flight from the United Arab Emirates.

Francis's admission followed an outcry last week in the Vatican's women's magazine over the sexual abuse of nuns by priests.

The magazine went on to say this has led to religious sisters feeling forced to have abortions or raise children not recognised by their fathers.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which is the largest US organization of women religious, thanked Francis for shedding "light on a reality that has been largely hidden from the public".

It called for measures to address the issue, saying it's time to rethink the Church's male-led hierarchy.

The LCWR also made a statement asking for reporting guidelines to be established so abused nuns "are met with compassion and are offered safety".

News media reports and the #MeToo movement have brought the issue of sexual violence against nuns to the fore, which for women religious has morphed into a new hashtag: #Nunstoo has been trending in recent days.

The LCWR says it is grateful Francis has "shed light on a reality that has been largely hidden from the public and we believe his honesty is an important and significant step forward".

It also acknowledged some religious congregations have been part of the problem as they didn't support sisters in coming forward to report abuse in the past.

"We regret that when we did know of instances of abuse, we did not speak out more forcefully for an end to the culture of secrecy and cover-ups within the Catholic Church that have discouraged victims from coming forward," the LCWR says.

Not speaking up is seen to have been a reflection of the church's overreaching concern with protecting its reputation from scandal, as well as the fear of reprisals internally for speaking out.

Source

• News.com.au
• Varsity Maine
• Angelus
• ARS-dkprogressImage:

As part of an international umbrella organization, the International Union of Superiors General, the superiors from orders in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg want women to be admitted to all offices in the Church, including ordained offices.

The German-speaking superiors general, who met last month in Innsbruck, Austria, have called for a new "culture of dialogue, of participation, and of gender equality."

The Church's teaching should be adjusted to "new scientific findings in the theological and other academic disciplines."

The superiors general say an increase of qualified women in the Church would bring "diversity and an enrichment on all levels."

One could learn from religious communities "how men and women have fruitfully worked - and still work - together for the people."

They have also requested that women have voting rights at future synods of bishops.

"In the future, more women are to be included at synods of bishops - of course with voting rights. That is the only way they can influence decisions," they explain.

The Union consists of 2,000 representatives of apostolic women's communities worldwide with more than 900,000 members.

It was at their initiative in 2016 that Pope Francis established a commission on women deacons.

Source

• Lifesite News
• Association of Catholic Priests
• Image: UCA News

The Union of Superiors General for priests and brothers and the International Union of Superiors General for sisters and nuns are working on a proposal "to consider how, in future synods going forward, we can get more voice from the sisters."

At their annual joint meeting in November, the two umbrella groups will be moving the issue forward, Father Marco Tasca, the minister general, says.

"I think the correct path is to present this together, not 'we men' or 'we women' like children, but together.

"Consecrated life is made up of priests and laypeople, so it is only right that there also be lay superiors general at the synod."

World leader of the De La Salle Brothers, Robert Schieler, who is one of two non-ordained religious brothers serving as members of the synod on young people, says the umbrella groups are planning to ask Pope Francis to consider their proposal.

They will also ask Francis about the possibility of giving the women who take part in the synod the power to vote in the discussions.

While rules for the Synod of Bishops provide for the men's union of superiors to elect 10 voting members for the synod, there is no such provision for the women's union of superiors.

"It's a Synod of Bishops," Bruno Cadore, master of the Dominican order says.

But he points out the synod rules allow for "representatives" of religious life to participate, and they should be both men and women.

He also notes 80 percent of consecrated people in the church are women.

The seven women religious allowed to take part in the current synod on youth are serving in non-member roles: they can participate fully in the month-long discussions but they are not allowed to vote on the synod's final document.

However, Schieler says the Church's theology says brothers and sisters have analogous roles. They are each non-ordained, professed members of religious orders.

The difference is, they, as non-ordained men, may vote and women may not.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• Image: Crux Now

She says just concentrating on dwindling numbers diminishes every vocation, the church and even God.

The smaller numbers also "reflects our fears and our uneasy and unresolved relationship with death," she says. Read more

There were 132 participants from 21 countries attending the meeting.

The conference's theme was"A Call for Global Ecological Conversion."

Participants explored the meaning of ecospirituality and the inherent Asian spirituality that celebrates ; "Contemplative consciousness" and "ecological consciousness understood as awareness and sensitivity to the interconnectedness of all beings and things on Earth,"

They said the message of caring for the Earth, countering climate change and helping communities that global warming affects most will continue beyond the five-day Asia Oceania Meeting of Religious, known by its acronym, AMOR.

"We have done something for the whole Catholic church and the church in Myanmar," said Sr. Margaret Maung.

Sr. Margaret is the president of the Catholic Religious Conference of Myanmar,

She is Sister of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM) and chairwoman of the 19-member working committee.

"By the presentations and the table sharing and interacting, we came to know each other and the reality of the church, and that we are one with the Earth and the strengths and weaknesses of the environment and climate change."

At the conference country reports from Bangladesh, India, Korea, New Zealand and others showed the effects of climate change and pollution, as well as specific concerns, such as use of nuclear power in Japan in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Claretian Fr. Samuel Canilang, director of the Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, also made a presentation.

"Asians don't need anyone to tell us the environment is sacred," he said. "It is natural to us."

Not long ago, Canilang said, Asians may have felt self-conscious focusing such attention on the spirituality of the natural world, lest others accuse them of being pantheistic. But Laudato Si' is liberating Asians to speak of their relationship with nature, he said.

Source

• globalsistersreport.org
• Image: globalsistersreport.org

St Joseph Sister, Sr Carol Zinn, issued the warning at the triennial assembly of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome

The US sister said religious life has widely been a "first-world lifestyle" marked by opportunities for higher education and job and housing security.

While Sr Zinn said such education is important, she said it also "numbs our minds and blinds our heart".

Continue reading

Jane Maisey spent her twenties exploring, both physically and spiritually, looking at different religions and ways of being.

But it wasn't until the Christchurch earthquakes that she came back to the faith she had grown up in.

"I looked at our Catholic faith with new eyes and a new spirituality, and it's home for me, it's in my heart and how I want to live."

The earthquakes, she says, were a time in her life that provoked dramatic changes very quickly, leading her to consider one greater still: becoming a nun.

"To be honest, it was a really hard time in my life, and a lot of us experienced a lot of grief and trauma. Through that, though, it opened my eyes.

"I felt really strongly called to live a life of service - that, you know what, I would be really suited to that. Something in my heart sort of changed. Something within me realised - wow, this is for me."

Jane, now 35, had returned to New Zealand after working as a snowboarding instructor in Colorado and Scotland to start her own company as a designer before beginning her journey into religious life.

"For the past few years, I'd been running a graphic design business, working as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator - very corporate, very fast-paced, things were always changing, so I loved that."

Growing up in a rural New Zealand farming town, Jane had a Catholic upbringing - her mother is Maltese - but, though she was taught by nuns at school, as a child or adolescent, religious life didn't seem like an obvious or viable path. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• The Wireless, from an article written by Natasha Frost, an Auckland-based journalist who's spent most of the last five years living in Oxford and Paris.

Sister Lucy epitomised everything brilliant about parochial education. She was incredibly strict but also unbelievably smart, witty, kind and a beautiful person who strove to make a complete human being out of every student she came in contact with.

Sister would often regale us with real-life stories before beginning the day's lesson and what she shared the day she came to class, not quite her vivacious self, struck a chord with a room full of young, inexperienced teachers-in-training.

That morning Sister had gone into the teacher's lounge for her routine cup of coffee. She looked everywhere in the room but could not find the modest cup that she had used every day for the past 10 years to drink out of.

No one ever touched "her" cup - so where could it have disappeared? As she took a disappointed sip out of another cup, she caught a glimpse of a new student-teacher, using it. Sister was relieved but somewhat bothered by this rather innocuous act but the very next minute she felt sadder and angrier than ever before at herself.

She explained to us that at that very moment she felt like a complete failure because 40 years ago when she had decided to become a nun, she had renounced everything worldly and the fact that she felt so attached to an insignificant coffee cup, showed that her life's work had been tainted and squashed.

The story was a confession of sorts and by sharing it with us Sister was making sure that such a transgression would never occur again. Continue reading

• Rumni Saha is a newspaper columnist, a Special Education Teacher and lives in Boston.

It takes stunning courage to spend your life with the drug traffickers and other offenders serving time in Mexico's most notorious prison, but that's what the late Mother Antonia Brenner did, with a commitment to this work of mercy that her fellow sisters still carry on today.

It takes an ocean of faith in God to bid a bittersweet farewell to your cherished work in Catholic education and move 800 miles away to live and work with the poor. But that's what Sister Johnna Ciezobka and Sister Susanne Dziedzic did.

It takes bold creativity to decide you will be the one to reach out to farmworker families in California who speak only one language, Mixteco, of which you can speak about three words. But that's what Sister Sandra Silva did.

In the years since the Second Vatican Council, after many women religious turned their Catholic schools and hospitals over to the capable hands of laypeople, they frequently found their new callings among the poor in places often referred to inelegantly as "the middle of nowhere." These women anticipated by decades the call of Pope Francis: "We must get out of ourselves and go toward the periphery."

If you happen upon a forgotten corner of desperate poverty or a neglected collection of humanity, chances are good that a religious woman has arrived before you. You'll find her running a soup kitchen or a food pantry, teaching someone to read, praying with farmworkers in the fields, or caring for men and women on the streets, in prison, or in the hospital. Continue reading

• Source: U.S. Catholic
• Image: The Dialogue

Cardinal Dolan presided at the Mass of Religious Profession at St. Ann's Novitiate, Queens Village, New York.

He was keeping a promise he had made to one of them - Sister Elizabeth Mary de la Croix - when he met her in St. Patrick's Cathedral shortly before her entrance into the Congregation. When he learned that she was originally from his home parish in Baldwin, MO, and had gone to Holy Infant Grade School, just as he did, he vowed to be present if and when she made first vows.

Sister Mary Richard Morris, who is responsible for formation at St. Ann's, reported that the Little Sisters believe this was the first time that the Archbishop of New York has presided at one of their professions "since 1901," when it was Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan.

The Pontifical Year Book, published May 13 and contains data from 2011, reveals a 21 percent drop in the number of religious sisters in Oceania over the last 10 years.

While the number of religious sisters rose in Africa and Asia over the past decade, Europe registering a 22 percent decline, and the Americas were down 17 percent.

World-wide the number of nuns has fallen from a million in 1973 to 710,000 today.

In the picture Sister Cecilia is standing at the far left and sister Makalita at the far right.

Source

• littlesistersofthepoorindianapolis.org
• aleteia.org
• Washington Post
• Image: littlesistersofthepoorindianapolis.org

Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Religious, said the lack of discussion over the action against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) caused him "much pain".

"We have to change this way of doing things," the cardinal said during an open dialogue session with some 800 leaders of sisters' communities at the triennial assembly of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome.

"Cardinals can't be mistrustful of each other. This is not the way the Church should function."

Cardinal Braz de Aviz referred several times to tensions between sisters and bishops on Church authority, questions of obedience, and the future of religious life.

At one point he even called for a wide-ranging review of structures of Church power.

"We are in a moment of needing to review and revision some things," he said. "Obedience and authority must be renewed, re-visioned.

"Authority that commands, kills. Obedience that becomes a copy of what the other person says, infantilises."

Cardinal Braz de Aviz said his congregation first learned of the move against the LCWR in a meeting with the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after the formal report on the matter had been completed.

At that meeting, he said, he told Cardinal William Levada, who has since retired as head of the doctrinal congregation, that the matter should have been discussed between the Vatican offices.

"We will obey what the Holy Father wants and what will be decided through you," Cardinal Braz de Aviz told the sisters he had said to Levada. "But we must say that this material which should be discussed together has not been discussed together."

"I obeyed," Cardinal Braz de Aviz told the sisters. "But I had so much pain within me."

He also said it was the first time he was discussing the lack of consultation publicly, saying he previously "didn't have the courage to speak."

Sources:

National Catholic Reporter

National Catholic Reporter

Image: National Catholic Reporter

The Pope's view was conveyed to representatives of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, led by president Sister Florence Deacon, by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, at a meeting in Rome.

A statement from the congregation said Archbishop Müller, who was meeting the group for the first time, expressed his gratitude for the great contribution of women religious to the Church in the United States.

"The prefect then highlighted the teaching of the Second Vatican Council regarding the important mission of religious to promote a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the magisterium," the statement said.

"He also emphasised that a conference of major superiors, such as the LCWR, exists in order to promote common efforts among its member institutes as well as co-operation with the local conference of bishops and with individual bishops. For this reason, such conferences are constituted by and remain under the direction of the Holy See."

The statement concluded: "It is the sincere desire of the Holy See that this meeting may help to promote the integral witness of women religious, based on a firm foundation of faith and Christian love, so as to preserve and strengthen it for the enrichment of the Church and society for generations to come."

In a brief statement after the April 15 meeting, the LCWR said the talks were "open and frank". It added: "We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church."

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Reporter

Image: Journal Sentinel

"Anyone who works with the Holy See network will be aware of the vital role played by women religious in almost every aspect of Church life on the ground and across the world, be it in education, development work, health care, managing parishes, supporting papal nuncios, or spreading the word about the faith," wrote Nigel Baker, who is not a Catholic.

"I wonder whether the Holy See is doing all it might to mobilise this great resource — Catholic women worldwide? No society can afford not to do so."

Continue reading

Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell was addressing the 900-strong assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in St Louis, Missouri.

The LCWR's 1500 members represent about 80 per cent of US congregations of female religious.

The assembly is the first since the Vatican's doctrinal assessment, which said reform was needed to ensure fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas that include abortion, euthanasia, women's ordination and homosexuality.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, who is to supervise the reform, is not attending the assembly. Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the US bishops' conference, said he offered to come, but was told his presence "would not be helpful".

In a telephone media conference before the assembly, Sister Farrell said it would work on normal business as its response to the Vatican. "We don't want to allow this doctrinal assessment to really take over the mission and the entire agenda of our organisation because we do have other important things to be about," she said.

Asked if a democratic vote of the membership would be taken, she said "a sense of the membership" would be determined. "Our process of discernment is typically not taking a vote," she explained.

In a welcoming address, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St Louis praised the work of the sisters and their influence on his own life. Referring briefly to the standoff with Rome, he cited as a model the conflicts between apostles Peter and Paul in the early days of the Church. "They managed to work things out then, and I pray that you will work things out now," he said.

In a blog post on the eve of the assembly, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops' conference, wrote "We Catholics love the Sisters!" and voiced confidence that they would survive the "examination by Rome".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Register

Image: New York Times

In his column in NCR, Eugene Cullen Kennedy writes that "While the great achievements for the church of women religious are ignored, as are their lives of personal sacrifice, and they are presumed guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for such things as allowing speakers at their assemblies to speak of cultural realities that everyone can see, such as feminism, those who claim to see things that nobody else can see, and that, in fact, might not be there at all, are treated far more respectfully."

• Read Eugene Cullen Kennedy's article
• Image: Fr Paul Johnson