Her name before becoming a nun was Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez, and she was born around 1651. Nicknamed "The Mexican Phoenix" and "The Tenth Muse", she advocated for the feminist cause long before it had a name.

Sor Juana was a fearless defender of the cause of education for women, she persistently rejected the life that was assigned for her as a woman of the 17th Century, and she relentlessly pursued an education, in a time in which women were not entitled to one.

Sor Juana is now considered a national icon in Mexico. Her face is featured in the 200 pesos bill, and her convent is now an important centre of higher education.

Last year, Netflix produced "Juana Inés", an original series based on her life.

One of her most famous verses reflects how she was a woman ahead of her time:

"O foolish men who accuse

women with so little cause,

not seeing you are the reason

for the very thing you blame:

for if with unequaled longing

you solicit their disdain,

why wish them to behave well

when you urge them on to evil?"

"You think highly of no woman,

no matter how modest: if she

rejects you she is ungrateful,

and if she accepts, unchaste." Read more

Francis made the comments to an online conference on religious life in Latin America.

Urging the religious to renounce the criterion of declining numbers Francis warned that failure to do so "can turn you into fearful disciples, trapped in the past and giving into nostalgia."

"Nostalgia is fundamentally the siren song of religious life," Francis told them.

Religious should focus on evangelization instead and "leave the rest to the Holy Spirit," Francis said.

"I would like to remind you that joy, the highest expression of life in Christ, is the greatest witness we can offer the holy people of God whom we are called to serve and accompany on their pilgrimage toward the encounter with the Father," he said. "Peace, joy, and a sense of humour."

Francis also told them he is saddened by consecrated men and women who have no sense of humour, who take everything so seriously … To be with Jesus is to be joyful," he said.

Pope Francis also warned the conference against misusing liturgy by placing an emphasis on ideology.

He delivered his cautionary advice to the online conference in a video message last Friday.

"Let us not forget that a faith that is not inculturated is not authentic.

"For this reason, I invite you to participate in the process that will provide the true sense of a culture that exists in the soul of the people," Pope Francis says in the video.

"When this inculturation does not take place, Christian life, and even more so the consecrated life, ends up with the oddest and most ridiculous Gnostic tendencies.

"We've seen this, for example, in the misuse of the liturgy [where] what is important is ideology rather than the reality of the people. This is not the Gospel."

Francis's video message was featured at a virtual conference on religious life organized by the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR).

The conference focus was on inculturation.

John Paul II described this concept as the process by which "the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own community."

"May the Holy Virgin protect you. She knows all about the encounter, fraternity, patience, and inculturation," he finished.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Grounds read newspapers in Italian, translated religious scripture from French to English and keenly studied te reo Maori and German.

She died in Christchurch on October 21. Read more

A salamander that is unique to Mexico - has almost been wiped out of its freshwater habitat by pollution and over-fishing. Read more

He has been there only for a short time but now he is off on a mission to Thailand.

He is planning to stay in Thailand for two years and then he will come back to New Zealand.

O'Brien celebrates his 50th Jubilee of Marist Religious life this year.

A lot of his ministry has been in Maori Pastoral Care, in Porirua, up North in Rawene and Okaihau.

He most recently was working in Otara, Auckland. This year he has been at Pukekaraka, Otaki.

His skills in fixing computers and getting things going smoothly have been in good use.

O'Brien will be joining The Marist Asia Foundation (previously called Marist Mission Ranong MMR).

He will be living in a community in Ranong which includes fellow New Zealander Father Frank Bird.

Ranong is a fishing village in the South of Thailand.

It is located opposite the southernmost town of Burma/Myanmar (Kaw Thaung).

This makes it a significant border crossing town.

MMR began working there in 2006 responding to the education, health and migrant worker needs of the Burmese community.

The latest estimates suggest Ranong has up to 120,000 Burmese migrants, most of whom work in the fishing industry.

In 2013 the Marist Asia Foundation opened a purpose-built Marist Centre.

The Marist Centre provides:

• Education for over 200 Burmese migrant children
• An HIV AIDS community-based health project for 75 individuals and their families
• Support programmes for hundreds of Burmese migrant workers

The Marist Asia Foundation team includes a number of Thai and Burmese as well as international volunteers.

They work with the Thai government authorities, other non-governmental organisations and the local Thai and Burmese community.

Source

• Supplied: P Cody
• maristasiafoundation.org
• Image: Supplied: P. Cody

In her opening remarks, International Union of Superiors General (UISG), President Sr. Carmen Sammut spoke about how Religious congregations are changing.

Communities in Europe, America and Australia are shrinking, with more younger members coming from Africa and Asia. Cultural differences with resultant misunderstandings often arise, she said.

At the meeting, a series of speakers addressed some of the issues that these changes are giving rise to.

Some of the key points discussed

• Respecting differences.
• Communicating clearly.
• Adjusting formation programmes to create connection among novices and postulants from various cultures.
• Extending such awareness training to older members of the community.
• Remembering that Christianity and the Catholic Church are rooted theologically in international mission.

Fr Anthony Pernia, the dean of studies at the Divine Word Institute of Mission Studies, said the goal is to move from being multicultural — people of different cultures in the same group — to intercultural, so the various communities enrich each other.

A panel of four young sisters shared their experiences living in multicultural communities in the Philippines.

Sr Eden Panganiban, who has held several leadership positions with the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, gave an overview of the cultural changes within the congregation and an acculturation process that the Philippines North Province community uses in welcoming sisters from other countries.

Panganiban said there are four distinct parts to the process:

• The first two steps provide basic information about the community and sensitivity training to appreciate cultural differences through formal sessions or informal exchanges.
• A third step is guided immersion, or "learning by doing," which helps foster a sense of belonging and addresses culture shock.
• The final step is gaining proficiency in the local language, which facilitates adjustment and enhances social skills.

Source

• Global Sisters Report. A Project of the National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Global Sisters Report Gail DeGeorge

Most magicians are incredulous when they find that the standard by whom all card tricks are judged was not only a devout Catholic but, in fact, a consecrated brother.

He went by the stage name "Br. Hamman" but most magicians never make the connection that he was, in fact, an actual religious brother. Continue reading

Those were exciting years. In February 1968, aged 19, I entered an Irish Cistercian monastery. It was just three years after the Council ended and a few months after the Cistercian general chapter met to implement the decisions of the Council.

I left six years later, in 1974, just before I would have made my solemn profession. But I still regard the community as friends and brothers.

By the time I left some major changes had taken place: the adoption of English in the liturgy, the end of the very strict silence (we had communicated by sign language), the move from sleeping in dormitories to our own rooms, and a more relaxed attitude towards trips outside the monastery.

Then there was the introduction of newspapers and even the radio (later television and the internet were also allowed).

Those were the years of "dialogue" (encouraged by Pope Paul VI): with each other, with the superior, with the outside world.

The question was: how to be monks, true to the original charism of our order, in the 20th century?

Undoubtedly some of the changes were necessary (eg the rule of silence); others were adopted too hastily and carelessly (the loss of the Latin liturgy and Gregorian chant - the Council had asked monks especially to preserve this).

As the Church's Year of Consecrated Life has just ended, it is worth reflecting on what has happened to religious life in general in Western countries over the past 50 years and whether it has a future.

At first sight it is a rather grim picture. Most religious orders in the West are declining numerically and ageing. This makes them less attractive to young people.

Since most of the active orders no longer wear the habit, they have become almost invisible to wider society. Continue reading

• Professor John Loughlin is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. This article was first published in The Catholic Herald.

Nuns have been in Hamilton East since 1884, says Sister Raewyn Hogan, and four generations of her family have gone through Marian Catholic School and Sacred Heart.

Euphrasie House is now an earthquake risk building is being knocked down - which is sad for the sisters who used to call it home, but necessary for the safety of the girls, said Sister Raewyn Hogan.

"I've always lived on this side of the river. Everybody knows who you are, they know me anyway."

"When you leave a place but you still come back, it's called home. Hamilton East has always been home." Continue reading

When you consider that Br Brian had long had a love of what he called a "semi-erimitical life" - a life hidden from view, significantly devoted to contemplative prayer, and that he lived in a hermitage within the Friary... Read more

"It was lovely," she said. "I was nervous before I got on, but once we got going it was great."

It started as a joke but before she knew it Cecilia was flying down the Parade in Island Bay, a Wellington Suburb, on the back of her neighbour's Harley Davidson motorbike.

Click here to see more photographs.

Sr Cecilia's neighbour, Tony Maresca, says he warmed to the "three beautiful nuns" straight away.

"They moved in next door to us a couple of years ago and we became good friends and good neighbours. They are really lovely people."

Tony says he joked with Cecilia when she first moved in, saying she should come for a ride on his Harley Davidson.

"I said to her, "when you get to 80 I'm going to take you on the motorbike", and she said "Yeah alright!"

When the day finally came, Tony says he thought she was going to back out, but she was all for it.

"The best part was when I brought her back everybody was clapping and cheering, and there was the most beautiful look on her face."

Source

• Cook Strait News
• Image: Supplied

The appeared twice on the Oprah show in 2010.

Then, when their participation first was suggested Oprah was hesitant.

"Do you really think a community like that would be willing to be on my programme?" she asked

Five years later and Oprah isn't finished with them yet. Read more

The religious order has run training programmes in New Zealand for 80 years and in Auckland since 1995.

The society's Auckland administrator Sister Patricia Leamy says the Manurewa centre was established in January 2009 to allow "flexibility for the number accepted for training".

"As the number of candidates diminished and the sisters evaluated the training programme, the congregation decided to close the centre," she says. Continue Reading

Last year, Sister Cristina Scuccia won Italy's version of The Voice talent show, and went on to release a cover of Madonna's Like a Virgin as her debut single.

Father Damian Maria Montes, 29, from Madrid, appeared wearing his clerical collar on the Spanish version of The Voice singing the Robbie Williams 1997 ballad.

Now Sister Florinda Ruiz, 68, from Puebla in Mexico has been dazzling the judges and the audience in MasterChef Mexico.

She decided to enter MasterChef to help her congregation pay off a big debt.

The top prize of 1m pesos ($59,000; £38,600) is only a fraction of the 7m pesos that The Sisters of the Passion of Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows owes over a school project, but Sister Flor - as she's become known - hopes the money will solve the order's immediate financial difficulties. Read More

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.

"I was a go-between between the underwriters and the customers," said Sister Virginia Joy, a former high school soccer star from South Carolina now wearing a habit of white and navy blue.

She was fighting Midtown Manhattan traffic, late for a lunch with some other nuns. "I was overwhelmed by the Lord's generosity in my life, and I wasn't fulfilled in this job," she said.

In 2009, at age 28 and then known as Virginia Cotter, she joined the Sisters of Life.

Young women joining religious orders have become increasingly rare over the years. The number of "women religious" in the United States is about 50,000, less than a third of that in 1966.

According to a Georgetown University study, "there are more Catholic sisters in the United States over age 90 than under age 60."

The younger nuns can be a surprising bunch. While many in the older generation moved to the left after the 1960s, in theology and politics — a trend that led in part to Pope Benedict XVI's investigation of American nuns in 2012 — younger nuns tend to be more conservative.

They want to wear the habit. While they work outside their communities, they have a strong focus on contemplative life, making time for hours of daily communal prayer. And they tend to have a strong sense of a particular mission.

Take, for example, the Sisters of Life, the religious order of Sister Virginia Joy.

Many of the nuns are in their 20s or 30s and have a commitment that can be divisive even in the Roman Catholic Church: "promoting life," which in practice includes an emphasis on discouraging abortions.

The members may hold to traditional teachings, but as they see it, there is nothing more countercultural in 2015 than a young woman's becoming a nun — eschewing careerism, material possessions, sex.

Two other traditionalist orders — a Dominican order in Nashville, and one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which has expanded to Austin, Tex. — have attracted national attention; in 2010, the Ann Arbor nuns even made it on "Oprah." Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: Tom Perna

A group of young adults joined with Cardinal John Dew, Diocesan and Marist priests, seminarians, Sisters of Compassion, Marist Brothers, married couples and their families and consecrated singles from around the archdiocese of Wellington at the Home of Compassion, Island Bay.

The event was facilitated by Young Church Ministries as part of the Young Church's Month of Vocation in August.

Isabella McCafferty from the Young Church Ministries says the purpose of SEEK was two-fold:

• To celebrate an intergenerational church, sharing wisdom and stories with each other.
• to promote a post Vatican II model of Vocation, ultimately our universal call to holiness and to then explore the how this is lived out in our lives.

"Pope Francis in his latest encyclical, Laudato Si, speaks of communities where people feel 'held within a network of solidarity and belonging'," she said.

"This was the hope for SEEK; that each person would feel comfortable to share and that people would be held within this network of solidarity."

The first half of the afternoon allowed for people to literally walk alongside each other to the top of the hill overlooking the Home of Compassion, asking honest and open questions of each other in relation to their vocation.

The second half of the afternoon included a reflection led by Sr. Sue Cosgrove which asked the group to consider what makes them feel joyfully alive.

Sr Sue concluded with a quote from Suzanne Aubert in response to the time shared together saying, "Gratitude is the most beautiful ornament of the human heart."

SEEK finished with Mass celebrated by Cardinal John Dew.

During his homily, Cardinal John reflected on the gift that the time together at SEEK had been and called the group to reflect on the gifts God had given them and to remember those words of Suzanne Aubert.

Source

• Suppled
• Image: Supplied

One woman and two men briefly spoke about their motivation and about their experience of living in a community.

The report noted that while there are not lot of people opting for religious life these days, the numbers, both locally and world-wide are recovering from the lows of the 80 and 90s
Source

• radionz.co.nz

Former executive director Sr Janet Mock emphasised the need for inter-congregational ministries.

The St Joseph Sister said there could be no "superstars" in religious life.

Sr Mock discussed the need for current leadership to ensure that younger sisters are prepared intellectually, spiritually and psychologically for the world.

Sr Mock said there are about 1200 women in the United States in initial formation.

"What if we addressed these needs across congregations together?" Sr Mock asked the audience.

"Because, after all, these women are ours."

One group discussion explored the idea of having inter-congregational small groups of women in initial formation that could engage, grow and even fail together.

Continue reading

Mercy sister Mary Winefride Blake died on 30 July in Hutt Hospital. She was 101 years old.

Winefride grew up in a musical house and spent much of her life teaching singing a choral music at St Mary's College in Thorndon, and was still involved in teaching a month ago.

She was trained as a singer before she entered St Mary's Convent.

Requiem Mass for Winefide will be celebrated at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St, Thorndon Wellington on Tuesday 4 August at 11.00am.

Compassion sister Walburga (Dorothy Rose Marchant) died on 1 August at St Joseph's Home of Compassion in Heretaunga. She was 98.

Walburga was brought up with strong family connections to te iwi Maori and her father worked with Maori in Manaia (Taranaki) and spoke the language.

She had a great and abiding affection for te iwi Maori and spent much of her religious life working among them.

A vigil for Walburga will take place at St Joseph's Home of Compassion Chapel in Heretaunga on Tuesday 4 August at 4.00pm.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated in Our Lady's Home of Compassion Island Bay Chapel on Wednesday 5th 2015 at 12.00pm followed by burial at Karori Cemetery.