In a recent interview published in the Fiji Times, Compassion Sister Annette Green shared some of her life story with reporter Sailosi Batiratu. Annette said she made her first trip to Fiji in 1962, teaching at St Agnes Primary School in Nabua until the end of 1976. This time she says she is there to help Read more
Last weekend, in Whanganui, several hundred Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth and Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart gathered to celebrate their coming together as one religious congregation. Sister Catherine Shelton, of Whanganui’s Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth, said the weekend was a symbolic one for everyone. “It has been an Read more
In the 1970s, Linda Sim applied to the Singapore Armed Forces to be a front-line soldier, but was told women could take up only clerical positions. The Singapore Police Force also turned her down as she was too petite. Undeterred, the gutsy woman took up taekwondo and eventually earned a black belt. Then she heard Read more
Two women from Tonga, Sister Malia Cecilia and Sister Malia Makalita, were among six novices who took first their first vows as as Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States at the beginning of the month. Cardinal Dolan presided at the Mass of Religious Profession at St. Ann’s Novitiate, Queens Village, New York. He Read more
On 2 February, twenty-five years to the day after the Society of Mary left Taradale parish, Adrian O’Flynn, Tom Kouijzer and Brendan Jenke took their first vows as Marists. Tom (Holland), Adrian and Brendan (New Zealand) took their vows at Mass attend by forty Marist priests and brothers, who came from around the country for Read more
Sister Sesilia Ioane, from Samoa, is leader of the Sisters of Nazareth community at Nazareth House in Wynnum, Queensland. She says that young people seem to think that “nuns are not quite human.” It’s clear that such young people have not heard her wonderful laugh, nor seen the remarkable work she does with the elderly Read more
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and reflect on the major changes it brought to consecrated life, the Vatican’s congregation for religious has overhauled the course it offers on theology and canon law. The Second Vatican Council’s call for religious to return to the founding inspiration of their orders and, at Read more
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States has begun talks with the archbishop appointed to supervise its reform, but says it will not make fundamental changes to its expression of consecrated religious life. The LCWR national assembly had instructed its board to approach the discussion with Archbishop Peter Sartain “from a stance Read more
In one sense it is correct to say that the crackdown on the LCWR would seem to be “Rome vs. America”, in that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has declared that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious needs renewing. But, says John L Allen Jr in his National Catholic Reporter column, “At Read more
Both the investigation into the orthodoxy of the US’s Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and the “visitation” of active congregations of US sisters were initiated within weeks of each other in 2009. But while the latter received extensive publicity both in America and internationally throughout the entire time the process was underway, the LCWR Read more