We're headed to a small town a few hours away.

After endless traffic snarls, we turn onto a highway. The sister driving us turns up the volume of her Catholic pop tunes.

My mom, Joasia, had spent part of World War II hidden in a convent attached to an orphanage located in the town we are driving to.

At 69, Mom asked me to find the sisters who'd cared for her. I'd emailed over a dozen Catholic churches and I'd searched for months, but only met dead ends.

I was about to give up when a friend introduced me to the editor of a Polish Catholic magazine.

At his request, I asked Mom to describe the sister's clothing.

She said the nuns wore skirts and shirts, and sweaters when it was cold, and some covered their heads with scarfs -- no black or white head-to-toe habits.

The editor matched Mom's descriptions to the Imienia Jezus order.

When he reached out to them, Sister Honorata, their archivist, confirmed her order had hidden a small Jewish girl during the war.

When I met Sister Honorata at the order's headquarters yesterday, I felt hopeful.

Sister wore a polyester cream shirt, black calf-length skirt and black Birkenstock-style sandals with white socks, similar to my mother's description.

But I was still skeptical.

Whenever Mom shared her memories with me, I would research them.

Often, dates didn't line up.

Details differed.

Also, 10 years ago, she'd searched in Poland for the sisters and couldn't find them because she was looking in the wrong town.

Sister Honorata had been friends with the sister who'd cared for the little hidden girl, and who, until the day she died, worried about what happened to the child after the war.

"What was that sister's name?" My voice cracked.

"Sister Kornelia," Sister Honorata said, whispering as if someone was eavesdropping. "Joasia was always on her mind. They were more like mother and child."

Hearing her say Mom's name made my pulse gallop.

"But after the war, she was scared to talk about what happened. You could sense her fear," she told me.

This did not surprise me. Nazi Germany imposed a death penalty in Poland for anyone who aided Jewish people.

Hours later, in the car, Sister Honorata points out a small chapel painted daffodil yellow.

Greek pillars flank the front door. It's not the steepled brick building I had expected. Beside it is an enormous, single-story wooden building, large enough to be a factory. It was a school the sisters converted to an orphanage during the war — the one Mom had described to me.

I gasp. Mom has a sharp mind and excellent recall abilities. Continue reading

Their aim is to try to force the firearms manufacturer to stop making, marketing and selling assault-style rifles many US killers use in mass shootings.

The nuns' lawsuit alleges the directors have ignored growing legal risks from making assault-style rifles.

The directors have been able to get away with this because gunmakers have been protected. A 2005 US law known as The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act protected them from being held liable for mass shootings.

That changed last year.

Rival gunmaker Remington agreed to pay US$73 million to settle claims relating to a mass shooting at an elementary school.

Encouraged by the elementary school families' success, others are now looking to sue weapons' manufacturers over mass shootings.

The lawsuit

The nuns' lawsuit against Smith & Wesson's directors and senior management has exposed the company to significant liability, the New York Post reports.

The Post says Smith & Wesson could be seen to be intentionally violating federal, state and local laws and failing to respond to lawsuits over mass shootings.

It also says the first page of the Catholic nuns' lawsuit contains a photo from a mass shooting in Colorado in 2012.

The image shows a Smith & Wesson assault rifle on the blood-splattered ground next to pink sandals. Twelve people died and 70 were injured in that single attack.

The nuns speak out

"These rifles have no purpose other than mass murder" say the nuns.

The group - comprising nuns from four different Catholic orders - filed their "derivative lawsuit" in their role as Smith & Wesson shareholders.

Their attorney says this lawsuit is the first derivate case against a board over assault rifles.

Derivative lawsuits seek to hold corporate boards liable for breaches of their duties to shareholders. Generally however, Courts find boards are protected from lawsuits for good-faith decisions.

If the nuns' lawsuit succeeds, the company's directors would be liable for any costs associated with allegedly marketing illegal assault rifles.

Any damages would be paid to Smith & Wesson, not the plaintiffs.

The company included a warning in its 2022 annual report that it might have to pay significant damages due to legal proceedings against it.

Assault rifles - legal here, illegal there

New York, Illinois and California are among the states that have legislation which either outlaws assault rifles or makes it easier to sue over their use.

The US Supreme Court and many other states however have taken steps to expand gun-owner rights.

Source

• New York Post

Earlier this week, nuns from the missionary group formed a human chain around a digger to prevent the activists from chaining themselves to it.

However, the clash turned physical when an unnamed nun from the Notre Dame Missionary Family sprinted across a muddy field to tackle a protester who appeared to be carrying two plastic pipes.

A video captured the sister rushing a protester.

The look on the protester's face as he was intercepted and thrown down like a sack of potatoes is priceless.

While some hailed the nun a hero for her impressive athleticism, others were stunned.

"I didn't expect that," co-president of the association for the future of the Bourges valley Sylvain Hérenguel told public broadcast channel France 3.

"I expected the nuns to be a little reasonable for the public order"!

The Notre Dame Missionary Family is a traditionalist Catholic religious congregation.

According to The Times, the bishop of Viviers, Jean-Louis Marie Balsa, told the religious community to abandon the project because it was excessively large.

But the nuns ignored the bishop.

France 3 reports the church construction began in 2018 and has been a bone of contention for years.

The climate activists and the Catholic clergy who support the project will meet with local officials on Thursday in an effort to resolve the ongoing dispute.

Meanwhile, the tackling nun is probably at the gym preparing for a repeat performance of her legendary defensive manoeuvre.

And, as for the bishop who ordered the nuns to stop the construction, he better watch out.

Comments posted online include:

• "Nuns are legitimately superheroes."
• "She's having nun of it!"
• Catholic radio host Adrian Fonseca remarked that the "only problem is that more people aren't helping her."
• "Sister of no Mercy."

Sources

• Western Journal
• Fox News
• Metro
• The Times

Ten years later, a "tribunal" of older sisters decided she did not have a vocation and sent her packing.

Just days earlier, Jesuit Father Giovanni Cucci, professor of psychology and philosophy at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, published an article calling for greater church attention to psychological and physical abuse in communities of women religious.

So began a journey for Cernuzio, who set out to speak to women willing to share their stories.

The book includes interviews with 11 women; one was sexually assaulted by a priest but was told by her superiors that she must have led him on.

Others recount abuses of power and psychological or emotional abuse, mainly through acts of cruelty, humiliation and a denial of medical or psychological assistance.

Several of them mention how, particularly in the novitiate, they were required to ask permission to do or to have anything — including to take a shower or to have sanitary products during their menstrual cycle.

One told him she is looking for a way out of her community.

"I don't know where I'll go, I just want to follow Jesus, and it's not possible here. I can't live in this situation anymore and I'm afraid of destroying my physical, psychological and spiritual health. I hope to find help, maybe from some laypeople because I know that my congregation doesn't care about me," she said.

"As I have heard so many times: the fault is always with the one who leaves."

Cucci said the 11 women's stories have several things in common. One is the tendency in some more traditional orders to keep the same superior or superiors in office for decades. This can lead them to "confuse their will with the will of God" for the sisters in their community.

They also confuse uniformity with the unity of or peace within the community and treat any form of questioning as not only a challenge to the superior, but as a rejection of God's will.

The stories also show how slow the church is to change the way it deals with sexual abuse.

"‘Safeguarding' the good name of the institute is the priority, sacrificing the victim. The abused religious is transferred after being accused of seducing the priest and the priest stays in place, continuing his predatory activity undisturbed."

In the book's preface, Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, one of two undersecretaries of the Synod of Bishops, said the church must listen to the victims of such abuse.

In her view the solution is to adopt Pope Francis's model of a "synodal church" where every baptized person is respected, listened to and takes responsibility for caring for one another and being missionaries in the world.

Source

• Crux Now
• Image:Asia News
  

"I think there is a possibility of a revolt of religious sisters," said Lucetta Scaraffia, the former head of the Vatican magazine Donne, Chiesa, Mondo (Women, Church, World), adding that many nuns she has heard from "are furious."

Published Aug. 1 in La Civiltà Cattolica, the article raised concerns about the "lack of attention that abuse within female congregations has garnered," particularly overreach by some orders' mothers superior.

Superiors were said to enjoy better health care services and opportunities for vacations, while rank-and-file nuns are denied access to eye doctors or dentists, some sisters told the magazine.

Other nuns reported not even being able to enjoy a walk outside without asking for permission.

The article, by the Rev. Giovanni Cucci, also detailed the practice of "importing vocations" — bringing young nuns from other countries who don't speak Italian and are therefore more easily exploited. Their communities, he wrote, "are experienced more as a prison."

He also called attention to cases of sexual abuse of nuns by superiors.

The accusations "may appear puzzling and hard to believe for those who live in male congregations," wrote Cucci, "in the face of which one can simply smile."

Scaraffia, who left Donne, Chiesa, Mondo in March 2019 after denouncing a climate of "cover-up and censorship" created by Vatican higher-ups, said the Civiltà Cattolica article represents an effort to undermine the newfound voice of nuns in the church.

"It's a way to tell sisters that if they have press conferences, make their voices heard and denounce sexual abuse, (church authorities) will air all their dirty laundry," she told Religion News Service.

In her tenure at Donne, Chiesa, Mondo, Scaraffi published accounts of numerous cases of sexual abuse of nuns by male clergy. Her articles drew a wave of media attention to the conditions Catholic nuns endure around the world and helped inspire the #NunsToo movement.

"Nuns are emerging and speaking up as protagonists, but the church continues to ignore their existence," Scaraffia said.

A 2018 report by The Associated Press investigated numerous cases of sexual abuse of nuns by clergy in Asia, South America, Europe and Africa, attributing it to "the universal tradition of sisters' second-class status in the Catholic Church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it."

Other cases in Italy and Chile have brought calls for the Vatican to investigate.

The same year, a superior of the Missionaries of Jesus, a local women's order, accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, India, of raping her 13 times between 2014 and 2016.

Nuns from her congregations filed charges that ran to 2,000 pages and, when the church was slow to answer, marched in the streets.

Mulakkal, currently facing trial, has since been accused of rape by a second religious sister. (It was recently announced that he has contracted COVID-19.)

Scaraffia accused the church of hypocrisy for allowing the sexual abuse of nuns to go unpunished, especially in cases where the nuns have been forced to have abortions. "This is very serious for a church that claims to fight abortion," she said.

In February 2019, Pope Francis called bishops to a summit at the Vatican to address the sexual abuse crisis, which also took into account the cases reported by religious sisters. Scaraffia said a nun addressed the cardinals at the summit, stating that she had undergone three abortions after repeated rapes by a priest in her diocese.

During a papal visit to the Middle East after the summit, Francis lamented the behaviour, which he said stemmed from a society that "views women as second class."

He called the abuse of religious sisters by priests "a scandal" and hinted that it was a long-standing issue within the Catholic Church.

In May 2019, Francis imposed mandatory reporting rules for sexual abuse in all male and female religious orders.

The International Union Superior Generals, a global network of almost half a million nuns, asked its members to report sexual abuse and promoted "open conversations" within convents and better formation for nuns.

Still, Scaraffia, who said she has heard thousands of complaints from nuns about sexual abuse by priests, criticized the Vatican for not taking the necessary measures or looking into the charges appropriately.

"I love the church and I fight for the church," she said, adding that the church would have to deal with "a great rebellion" brewing among nuns.

"Don't forget that women are a revolution," she said.

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Through research, pastoral experience and interviews with F Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Cucci has formed a picture of the abuse.

For the most part the abuse does not take the form of sexual violence and does not involve minors. Instead, it is mostly an abuse of power and conscience.

Abuse in women's congregations "includes multiple cases of different severity" and which all need to be addressed if the voice of the Catholic Church is to be credible, Cucci says.

At the same time, Cucci notes such abuse does not negate the importance of the work carried out by so many women religious in the service of the least. Nor does it reflect all the leadership and styles of authority in women's congregations.

Cucci, who is a professor of psychology and philosophy at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, explains his purpose in speaking out about the abuse.

"It's not only a question of dealing with such painful cases - although this remains a priority and indispensable task," he says.

"It's also about preparing effective interventions to verify and supervise the manner in which government is exercised, so that such abuses will not be repeated."

"This way, those who wish to consecrate themselves to the Lord may be offered a more evangelical style of living authority and communal life."

Cucci says "the great attention rightly paid to the abuse of children should not prevent a proper response to these situations, even if they will not receive the same media clamor. It is a matter of giving a voice to those who have no voice."

Source

• La Civilta Cattolica
• The Arkansas Democrat Gazette

According to the Polish TV site TVN24, 10 sisters from the Congregation of St. Dominic stepped in when a coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in a local nursing home infected 15 staff members and nearly 30 residents.

With several staff members resigning out of fear of infection, and others self-quarantining at home, the home in Bochnia, Southern Poland, was left with so few healthy employees that caring for residents seemed impossible. Read more

Forty of the sisters belong to the Daughters of San Camillo convent on the outskirts of Rome, while 19 of the 21 sisters from the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul convent in Rome are reportedly infected.

Local authorities have been informed and an investigation has been launched into how the infections came about.

The San Camillo convent specifically cares for young students and elderly sisters.

The survival of the 40 sisters diagnosed with the COVID-19 is of concern, as the median age of those who die in Italy is below the average age of many convents and religious communities in Europe.

The speed of the virus's spread within the religious houses is similar to an outbreak in a US nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.

So far 35 people at the nursing home have died, representing over 60 percent of the country's total COVID-19 cases.

Despite the rate of infection, the general postulator of the Daughters of San Camillo says overall "we are fine,".

Three of the 40 infected nuns are hospitalized, while the others are not showing serious symptoms and are at home in the convent.

The general postulator also notes that despite the number of infected nuns being made public, "we don't know how many positive cases we have. We are still testing,".

The convent was not notified before the numbers were shared with the public, she says.

On the bright side, she comments, the sisters are nurses, so "we are prepared to face health risks and take care of the sick."

The situation at the two convents has drawn attention to the situation facing religious congregations across the world.

In many cases the often very elderly religious live in close contact with each other, and their order's apostolates can bring them into contact with the general public.

Cardinal João Braz, who is the prefect for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, has written to religious around the world.

He urged them to obey both civil and ecclesial authorities during the pandemic.

The "most effective witness we can give is first of all a serene and committed obedience to what is demanded by those who govern us, both at the state and ecclesial level, to all that is disposed to safeguard our health, both as private citizens and as a community," he wrote.

He encouraged all religious to offer "concrete signs of closeness to our people," at a time when public celebration of the sacraments have been put on hold in most parts of the globe in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.

Source

• Crux
• Image: Crux Now

"I want to reiterate that the journey of consecrated life, both female and male, is the path of ecclesial insertion," Francis said. He discussed how religious must work within the bounds of officialdom. "Outside the Church and in parallel with the local church, things do not work."

The pope also praised the network of religious sisters that combats human trafficking for being "on the front line."

Women who were sexually abused by nuns say while the abuse of boys by priests is being widely documented, their trauma is being overlooked.

"It's a spiritual rape, it really is," one says. "It steals your faith. I envy people who have faith."

"Nuns kind of get a free ride."

This survivor says her abuse at the hands of her teacher (a nun) began when she was 13.

"She always, always described it as ‘God's love' — ‘this is God's love, nobody else is going to understand it."

"You think of women as being nurturing, and you trust them more.

"And when it's done gently, and sweetly, and they paint it to your benefit, you believe it. It's a true form of brainwashing. I have to believe that, because how else could I have been so blinded?"

Another survivor who has disclosed her abuse says she was a 15-year old schoolgirl when she met the nun who abused her. The nun, who was 36 at the time "had taken the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. She stole from my body, my mind and my soul. The woman was a thief who did not keep her vows."

She says at the time she felt alienated from her family and came to see the nun as her mentor. The two became close.

Then, one day, the nun invited the 13-year old to a shore house, and slipped something into her tea.

"She took me into the bedroom and I passed out," the survivor says. "I was not conscious. I was not able to make a decision." She says this was the first of many sexual assaults.

She also says at the time the nun abused her, she had already been raped by her uncle, a priest. As an adult alcoholic, she initially blamed her drinking on that incident. "And yet [the nun] was the first person that gave me alcohol and drugs. Continually," she says.

A third survivor, now aged 67, says her abuse began when she was 15, when she was repeatedly raped by a nun.

She says for years afterwards she lived a life on the edge of falling apart. Much of her life has been spent trapped in a state of rage, depression and agoraphobia, unable to leave the house or to leave her daughter, who is now 36.

Source

• Whyy.org
• People
• FoxNews
• Huffington Post
• Image: Dynamite News

"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:

The Rome-based International Union of Superiors General, which represents more than 500,000 sisters worldwide, is urging nuns who have been abused to report the crimes to police and their superiors.

They have promised to help nuns who have been abused to find the courage to report it. They have also promised to help victims heal and seek justice.

The Superiors General' statement was made the day before the UN-designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

News reports earlier this year claim the Vatican has known for decades about the problem of priests and bishops preying on nuns, but has done little to stop it.

The Superiors General' statement condemns the "pattern of abuse that is prevalent within the church and society today."

It notes sexual, verbal and emotional abuse are all types of mistreatment that festers in unequal power relations and demeans the dignity of its victims.

"We condemn those who support the culture of silence and secrecy, often under the guise of ‘protection' of an institution's reputation or naming it ‘part of one's culture.'

"We advocate for transparent civil and criminal reporting of abuse whether within religious congregations, at the parish or diocesan levels, or in any public arena."

An Associated Press (AP) investigation says it found that cases of priests abusing nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. AP says its findings emphasise the way sisters' second-class status in the church has contributed to a power imbalance where women can be mistreated by men "with near impunity."

While some nuns voices are being heard via the MeToo movement, many victims remain reluctant to come forward.

Sisters fear they won't be believed and will instead be painted as the seducer who corrupted the priest.

AP says often the sister who denounces abuse by a priest is punished, sometimes with expulsion from her congregation, while the priest's vocation is preserved at all cost.

Source

• AP
• Independent
• Image: VOA News

Bishop Jacob Manathodath from Kerala has sought an explanation from Father Augustine Vattoly about his involvement in leading a protest against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar. Read more

Within that time frame, they will have to take leave of the forms of communication considered unsuitable for monastic life. Any failure to comply will result in canonical penalties. Read more

According to the Associated Press, cases of abused nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.

These cases demonstrate the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the sisters' second-class status in the church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it, Associated Press says.

Sisters are now going public, partly to denounce years of inaction by church leaders.

They say major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s.

One nun says she no longer goes to confession regularly after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was recounting her sins to him in a university classroom.

At the time of the incident 20 years ago, the sister said she told only her provincial superior and her spiritual director.

She felt silenced by the Church's culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame.

"It [the abuse] opened a great wound inside of me," she says. "I pretended it didn't happen."

Although the extent of priests' abuse of nuns is unknown, this week five former nuns of the Congregation of the Good Samaritan in Chile made a public statement about their abuse.

They say they reported a series of sexual abuses committed by priests visiting their community, which is dedicated to caring for the sick.

The former nuns say both sexual abuse and the abuse of authority occurred inside their congregation and they were mistreated when they reported the incidents to their superior.

Experts say the victims are reluctant to report the abuse because of well-founded fears they won't be believed.

Source

• The Week
• CruxNow
• Daily Mail
• Tribune India
• Boston Globe
• Image: Daily Mail

God only knows how many seminaries, monasteries, convents and churches will close because fewer people are being called to lives of religious service, he says. Read more

"It's in many ways a love letter ... to Catholic schools," Monsignor James Murphy says.

He says he is glad to see nuns and priests portrayed in a favourable light in the movie.

Murphy says he hopes the film will help change the audience's perspective about all priests being paedophiles.

"We've been through a lot in the past 10 to 15 years," Murphy adds. Movies like "Spotlight," which is based on a team of investigative journalists, exposed the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church in the early 2000s.

"The percentage is something like three or four per cent of priests that went wrong," he says.

"That's way too much. One is too much, but it's not 100 per cent of us.

"The vast majority of priests and nuns do a good job, and dedicate their lives running schools like St. Francis, and that movie helps bring that out and restore the balance."

Although the film, directed by Greta Gerwig, was nominated for several Oscars this year, the film did not win any of the categories it was nominated for.

Gerwig will appear on the cover of Time magazine next week for a story about "how women are redirecting Hollywood".

Source

• The Mercury News
• abc10
• Image: YouTube

Lucetta Scaraffia, who is the editor of the Vatican magazine "Women, Church, World", says "Until now, no one has had the courage to denounce these things."

She says nuns work as cooks, cleaners and waiters for cardinals, bishops and priests.

The article is based on comments from several nuns.

They describe how some work in the residences of "men of the Church, waking at dawn to prepare breakfast and going to sleep once dinner is served, the house is in order and the laundry cleaned and ironed".

In many cases, the nuns, who take vows of poverty, receive no pay because they are members of female religious orders.

They are sent to the residences of male Church officials as part of their assignments.

In the past, most of the nuns working as domestic help in male-run residences or institutions such as seminaries were local nationals. These days, many come from Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world.

The article says what most saddened one of the nuns she talked to was that "they are rarely invited to sit at the table they serve".

Instead, they are made to eat in the kitchen by themselves.

One nun said she knew of fellow sisters who had PhDs in subjects such as theology.

They had been, with no explanation, ordered to do domestic work or other chores that had "no relationship to their intellectual formation".

Another pointed out that many nuns did not have registered contracts with the bishops, schools, parishes or congregations they worked for, "so they are paid little or not at all."

One nun said that "nuns are seen as volunteers to have available at one's calling, which gives rise to abuse of power."

The article pointed out the experiences of such nuns could be transformed "into a richness for the whole Church, if the male hierarchy sees it as an occasion for a true reflection on power [in the Church]".

Besides the described domestic work, several nuns have senior roles in Vatican departments that look after religious issues.

Pope Francis does not have nuns as servants looking after him.

Instead, he lives in a Vatican guest house which is run like a hotel.

He eats in the main dining room which is staffed by paid waiters.

Source

• La Croix
• The Guardian
• Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: Independent.ie

The diocese says the parents of one of the nuns have been killed.

In addition, the school the nuns run had to close for several months last year due to threats from drug gangs operating in the area. Read more