She was an outstanding leader who served the SMSM sisters at the highest level.

"Patricia was a Marist woman, a woman of the Church, and a woman of the world" said the sisters' present leader Sr Georgeanne Marie Donovan.

"Her concerns for others were not limited to where she came from or where she had been. She had a heart big enough to embrace the world."

"She never ceased to be interested in or concerned about others - be they from SMSM world, from the wider Marist world, from her family and friends, or from the countries, cultures, and beliefs other than her own."

Patricia was born in Lepea, Samoa. She attended St. Mary's school in Savalalo

Later she went to New Zealand from where she entered the SMSM noviciate in Heretaunga, in 1959.

After she made her religious profession in December 1962 Patricia stayed on in the noviciate as a staff member for four years.

She then returned to Samoa and went to St. Mary's College to complete her School Certificate and University Entrance studies.

She was then appointed to teach at Marista College at Moamoa.

In the second half of 1970's, Patricia got a scholarship to study at Macquarie University in Sydney where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Returning to Samoa, Patricia was appointed Regional Superior there. Not long after that appointment, she was sent to the USA to do a course on Religious Formation.

This prepared her for her next assignment which was to be the novice director for the SMSM noviciate in Heretaunga.

In 1987 Patricia was elected Superior General of the SMSMs for a period of seven years.

She was the first Pasifika person to be elected as Superior General of her congregation.

After the first term of 7 years, Patricia was re-elected Superior General for another 7 years. This was the first time that a superior general had been elected for two consecutive terms.

Patricia was well known in Rome and her hospitality made her very popular with all the Pasifika visitors and students who studied in Rome.

In her role as superior general, she had affiliation with many organisations, groups, and institutions in both the Vatican and in other parts of the world.

After 14 years of leadership, Patricia stayed on in Europe. She worked in Algiers in Africa, teaching English at the University.

After some time she returned to Lyon in France and helped with the community at Ste-Foy-les-Lyon.

It was about this time that she was diagnosed with cancer. But, after successful treatment, she continued to help look after the elderly sisters in Lyon.

Patricia was doing so well that a few years ago she was asked to take on another leadership role as regional superior for the Euro-Africa Region. She readily accepted it but, the cancer returned and Sr. Pat became very ill.

Source

• maristes-france.org
• sobserver.ws
• Image: samoaobserver

Calling the Vatican's review process "flawed" and "lacking transparency", the leadership group said "the sanctions were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their ability to fulfill their mission."

The nuns said the Vatican's report has "caused scandal and pain through the church community and caused greater polarization".

Sr Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference, and executive director Sr Janet Mock will travel to Rome to meet Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF) Cardinal William Levada, and Seattle Archbishop, Peter Sartin, the US bishop tasked with reforming the nuns over a five year period.

In April the CDF issued the assessment citing what it called grave concerns about the conference. It accused the group of promoting radical feminist ideas and positions contrary to church teachings on such issues as abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women.

The Vatican's assessment ignited a firestorm of criticism against the Vatican and an outpouring of support for the sisters, with many Americans joining vigils and protests and signing petitions.

Archbishop Peter Sartain, Saturday, issued a response to the sisters saying he and the CDF are "wholeheartedly committed to deling with the important issues raised by the Doctrinal Assessment and the LCWR Board in an atmosphere of openness, honesty, integrity and fidelity to the Church's faith."

Sources

• Leadership Conference of Women Religious
• BBC
• Catholic World Report
• CathNews
• Image: Catholic Herald

Starting Wednesday (NZ time) the religious women will meet for three days in Washington and intend to plan their move slowly, not rushing to judgment.

"The board will conduct its meeting in an atmosphere of prayer, contemplation and dialogue and will develop a plan to involve LCWR membership in similar processes," the group said in a statement.

"We will engage in dialogue where possible and be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. We ask your prayer for us and for the Church in this critical time."

Simone Campbell, a religious sister who's executive director of Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, said she thought the group would put together a draft response to be presented to the full assembly in August.

"I think the results for the media will be very anticlimactic because we as Catholic sisters do things with a lot of prayer and very slowly," Campbell said.

"It's going to be like watching paint dry," she added in a CNN interview.

The Vatican is concerned the Leadership Conference of Religious Women has serious doctrinal problems and has ordered them to undergo a forced reform.

An announcement on April 18 charged the religious women

• with using materials that "do not promote church teaching" on family life and sexuality,
• for sometimes taking positions in opposition to the nation's bishops and
• for being "silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States."

Sources

• San Diego News
• CathNews

So says US author, researcher and expert on Religious Life, Donna Steichen.

Steichen says this view is being manufactured by sympathetic media, including the Washington Post, Huffington Post and the Independent. She says they are closely followed by the extreme Catholic left, the National Catholic Reporter and America.

Calling it a "deliberate falsehood," Steichen urges Catholics to understand the "spin".

Steichen told Lifesite News, the spin "is omnipresent, always interesting, and often unintentionally comic. But however maliciously intended, I think it contains an element of nostalgia. It proves the irresistible attraction of goodness. Not even the liberal mainstream media can fail to see its beauty."

She said the Vatican's attempt at reform is 40 years overdue, but warned it is unlikely to succeed. According to Steichen, the good news is the bad news, with the mean age of 74 "it is evident to all observers that the feminist contingent of women religious is indeed dying out."

Steichen, who spent 10 years researching feminism in the Catholic Church, and in particular in religious life, blames feminism for the situation the nuns find themselves in.

Feminism is "detestable" because it is "so demeaning of women," she said.

"It (feminism) denies the value of their natural role, urging them to trade it for the shabby substitutes of paid participation in the work force."

"Religious feminism is worst of all, because it further demands that women cease to recognize God's eternal order. ...it commands women to serve 'no Gods, no masters'. Which somehow comes to mean 'except feminist ideology'."

Labeling the current situation a "bit of a public relations slight of hand", Steichen suggests those who are outraged at the Vatican examine some of the speeches made by speakers at the LCWR's annual conferences.

Sources

• Life Site News
• Image: Jezabel

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, insists the group would continue "caring for the least among us on the margins of society."

Campbell said that Network, which works with the LCWR and vocally supported President Barack Obama's healthcare reform legislation, would not shy away from its mission, calling the Vatican's report "painful," and also puzzling.

"It was a total shock for many reasons, no one talked to us" during the inquiry, Campbell said.

"We are a political, not doctrinal, organisation: we don't teach theology."

Lamenting the battle with the Vatican, Campbell is worried the dispute could needlessly re-focus the positive energy within the Network.

Campbell said it was "painfully obvious" the Vatican leadership was "not used to having educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue."

"We will keep doing our mission," she insisted in a phone interview with AFP, Saturday, saying the group was founded to "lobby, organize and educate" in the name of social and economic justice.

The three-year inquiry by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees Roman Catholic doctrine, criticised the LCWR for taking liberal stances on contraception, homosexuality and female priests.

The report accused members of the LCWR, which represents around 80 percent of the 45,000 nuns in the United States, of "corporate dissent" with the Church's teachings against homosexuality, and claimed it was pursuing "radical feminist themes."

"This is the same church that ignored people who were being pedophiles," said Sister Jo'Ann De Quattro, who, as a Los Angeles nun for more than 50 years, has worked as a teacher and advocate for peace and justice.

Cracking down on nuns was a convenient way of shifting the focus away from the church's ongoing abuse scandal, said De Quattro.

"We really know why they're focusing on the women. It's all about control. It's all about exercising authority."

"Some of this stuff leaves me speechless and cold," she said.

"The world is in such desperate need of leadership, and they're talking about all this stuff that's truly small when we need big leaders, big thinkers and big hearts."

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has appointed the Archbishop of Seattle, Peter Sartain, to oversee the LCWR and ensure it follows "the teachings and discipline of the Church."

Sources

• BBC
• The International News
• LA Times
• AFP
• Image: Add Onion

The announcement, made on April 18 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, came in an 8 page "doctrinal assessment" based on an investigation by Bishop Leonard P Blair of Toledo, Ohio, and was carried out on behalf of the Vatican, beginning in 2008.

"The current doctrinal and pastoral situation of LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern, also given the influence the LCWR exercises on religious congregations in other parts of the world," the announcement concludes.

The LCWR is the largest umbrella group for Roman Catholic religious women in the United States and it is charged

• with using materials that "do not promote church teaching" on family life and sexuality,
• for sometimes taking positions in opposition to the nation's bishops and
• for being "silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States."

Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain will manage the five-year reform, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs - including approving speakers - and ensuring the group properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

Noting the great contribution women religious have made to the church in the support of the poor, and in schools and hospitals, the Vatican insisted it was not commenting on the faith and life of women religious.

The Vatican however views that LCWR's deviations from Catholic teaching have provoked a crisis "characterised by a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration."

Sources

• CNS
• Associated Press
• Image: Huffington Post

They also argue, that according to the Church's moral guidelines, religious women are free to take the pill for this purpose.

As reported by the Guardian, the scientists say that it is an established scientific fact that by not having children there is an increased risk in getting cancer because pregnancy, and breastfeeding a baby, reduces the number of ovulatory cycles a woman has in her lifetime.

More ovulatory cycles increases cancer risk.

While increasing the risk of blood clots, the oral contraceptive pill has been shown to reduce the

• overall mortality rates of women who have ever taken it by 12% compared with non-users, and
• risk of developing ovarian and endometrial cancers by 50%-60% in pill users compared with never-users. (Protection that persists for 20 years.)

Writing in the Lancet, Dr Kara Britt from Monash University, Melbourne, and Professor Roger Short from the University of Melbourne say religious women should have the option to take the pill.

"The Catholic church condemns all forms of contraception, as outlined by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968. Although Humanae Vitae never mentions religious women, they should be free to use the contraceptive pill to protect against the hazards of nulliparity since the document states that 'the church in no way regards as unlawful therapeutic means considered necessary to cure organic diseases, even though they also have a contraceptive effect."

"If the Catholic church could make the contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus, and give nuns' plight the recognition it deserves," they write.

Women who begin their periods at an early age and hit the menopause late are also at a higher risk of mortality from breast, ovarian and uterine cancer.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: St Rita

Their work is not only high-risk, it is often emotionally demanding and spiritually draining. If they are very lucky, they work in a supportive environment under a supervisor who is stable, competent and compassionate.

Unlike males who seek the priesthood, the institutional church does not support their education or their profession — even though they, too, spend their lives studying and serving the church.

Unlike women religious, they do not experience some of the securities that come with religious life. They have to find employment on their own, pay their rent, maintain a household on their own and, in some cases, provide their own medical insurance. If they lose their jobs, there is no safety net to carry them through until they find work again.

Perhaps most challenging of all, these young women do not enjoy the sustenance that comes with a life of prayer, contemplation and community. Young women are as in need of this support as any of the sisters engaged in similar work.

The number of young adult Catholic women who find themselves in this predicament is not small. And, I believe, they are most certainly called by God in a way very similar to women religious.

The difference is that these young women grew up in a culture that, in some significant ways, is radically different from society in which the majority of sisters in the United States were raised.

The bulk of the sisters ministering in the United States today entered their communities during or before the 1960s. They were raised in a social climate that did not discuss sexuality openly and in a church that demanded they bury their sexual feelings. Thankfully, most women religious in the past few decades have moved beyond these repressed beginnings. Nowadays, sisters are among our culture's strongest advocates for sexual and gender justice. Read more

• Source: Jamie L Manson's blog in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Catholic News Service

Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her columns for the National Catholic Reporter earned her a first prize Catholic Press Association award for Best Column/Regular Commentary in 2010.