When an 1883 Catholic congregation in Wanganui saw that their nuns had changed brown robes for black some of them cried – they thought the pope must have died.
But it wasn’t that. It was a split in the nuns’ religious order, a split that divided friend from friend, Sister Catherine Shelton said.
That split has now been healed with Wanganui’s Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth – known as black Joes – reuniting with the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart – the brown Joes – which was where they started.