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Women Religious: Lives of mercy and justice
Feb. 17, 2010The purpose of Women Religious: Lives of mercy and justice is to draw attention to the remarkable work of women religious around the globe. You won't miss any postings to this new feature, if you sign up to receive an e-mail alert. The sign-up page is here.
Rooted in Christ and Holistic Formation for New Evangelization
Jan. 29, 2012
Editor's note: The following talk was given by Sister Margaret Aringo Jan. 28, 2012 at the launching of the ACWECA five year strategic plan at the Catholic University of East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.
Your Excellency Archbishop Alain Paul Lebeaupin the Apostolic Nuncio to Kenya, your Grace, Archbishop Tarcisio Ziyaye, the Chairman of AMECEA, Your grace Most Rev. Raphael Ndingi Mwana a Nzeki, my Lord Bishop Philip Anyolo, His Excellency the Prime Minister Hon. Raila Odinga Amolo, the Vice Chancellor of the Catholic University Rev. Dr. Pius Rutechura and the entire University staff, ACWECA Executive members, major superiors present, religious men and women our partners in mission, AMECEA Secretary General Fr. Ferdinard Lugonzo and the entire AMECEA staff, government officials, representatives of the Catholic Women and Men Associations, distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen . . . . I begin by wishing you a grace filled year 2012.
African sisters launch eight nation strategic plan
Represents new stage in religious self-confidence
Jan. 29, 2012
Sister Margaret Aringo (NCR photos/Tom Fox)
NAIROBI, KENYA -- Raised in a Catholic family, at the age of nine a Kenyan girl encountered a Franciscan sister. Before long she had decided she wanted to model her life after that woman. Decades later, that young girl has grown up. She entered the Franciscans and now goes by the name Franciscan Sister of St. Joseph Margaret Aringo.
Dominican sisters resist war in prayer, action to disarm nuclear arsenals
Jan. 20, 2012
Dominican Sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert share smiles Jan. 12 outside Jonah House in west Baltimore. When not in jail, their home is the faith-based community of peace activists. The women have been arrested dozens of times on charges related to their demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons. (CNS photo/Nancy Phelan Wiechec)
BALTIMORE -- They call themselves peacemakers, following in the footsteps of the nonviolent Jesus.
Dominican Sisters Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte, members of the Jonah House community in Baltimore since 1995, have spent decades crisscrossing the United States opposing war and acting to bring to life the biblical call to "beat swords into plowshares" in symbolically disarming nuclear weapons and other tools of war. Their actions -- as feeble as they might seem -- have led to countless years in prison.
They say there is no better calling.
"I think being a good Catholic calls us to do these things," Gilbert told Catholic News Service at Jonah House on the grounds of the Archdiocese of Baltimore's St. Peter's Cemetery, where the nuns and other community members are caretakers.
"We talk about being faithful, living lives of faithfulness, being faithful to the Gospel. I think what the nonviolent Jesus was all about was faithfulness," she said.
"What is so important for people to understand (is) that in being faithful, God speaks," Platte continued. "We never know when we do an action where it's going to go, who it's going to touch, what it's going to speak to others."
Results of visitation of women religious quietly submitted
Jan. 11, 2012
Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (CNS photo/courtesy Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus)
Three years after its announcement caused a mixture of anxiety, anger and resentment among many sisters, the results of a Vatican-initiated apostolic visitation of U.S. women religious have been quietly submitted to Rome.
News of the submission came in a press release from the visitation's U.S. office Jan. 9.
According to Catholic News Service, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, confirmed Jan. 10 that the Vatican's congregation for religious life had received the reports and "is now studying them."
Sr. Kieran Foley, the communications liaison for the visitation's U.S. office, told NCR her office does not have a comment on the submission. The next steps for the investigation are "entirely up to the [Vatican] congregation," she said.
Book collects essay series on women religious
Dec. 27, 2011Sr. Sandra Schneiders says it’s a book she “never intended to write.”
In 2008, when news first broke of the Vatican’s apostolic visitation of U.S. women religious, the retired professor, a member of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, wrote a private e-mail to colleagues, giving her take on it.
Australian researchers: Nuns should take pill to protect against cancer
Dec. 12, 2011MANCHESTER, England -- Catholic nuns should take contraceptives to protect themselves against cancers linked to childlessness, two Australian researchers said in a British medical journal.
Writing in The Lancet, Dr. Kara Britt and Professor Roger Short say that oral contraceptives help prevent the onset of cancer of the breast, ovaries and uterus in women who have never had children.
"Catholic nuns are committed to leading a celibate, spiritual life in a monastery or convent," they said in the article, titled "The Plight of Nuns: Hazards of Nulliparity."
"In 1713, Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini noted that nuns had an extremely high incidence of that 'accursed pest,' breast cancer," the researchers wrote, adding that research among more than 30,000 nuns in the U.S. found a similar problem.
They said: "Today, the world's 94,790 nuns still pay a terrible price for their chastity because they have a greatly increased risk of breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers: the hazards of their nulliparity."
Path to sainthood cleared for sister who worked with lepers
Dec. 07, 2011
Blessed Marianne Cope (blessedmariannecope.org)
The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously confirmed Tuesday that a second miracle was due to the intercession of Blessed Marianne Cope, a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities in Syracuse, N.Y., according to a press release from the religious community.
Author revisits voices of US nuns
Nov. 07, 2011
HABITS OF CHANGE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN NUNS
By Carol Garibaldi Rogers
Published by Oxford University Press, $27.95
“Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” is a traveling exhibit that artfully communicates significant contributions Catholic sisters have offered to those they serve in this country. Although it was not intended as such, Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns is a fine companion piece. This particular text is an update and revision of an earlier book, Poverty, Chastity, and Change: Lives of Contemporary American Nuns, published in 1996. In the first edition, the author gathered 94 oral histories of women religious and subsequently published 54 of them. In the most current text, Rogers revisits the women first interviewed as well as talks to seven new interviewees, and allows us to see how their lives have evolved.
Pax Christi USA names new executive director
Oct. 24, 2011WASHINGTON -- Helping people understand how the sin of racism undermines society's ability to overcome violence and economic injustice is the top priority for Sr. Patricia Chappell as the new executive director of Pax Christi USA.
"People really have to acknowledge that racism is a deep integral sin in our country and we have to admit it continues to be an institutional sin," Sr. Patricia told Catholic News Service on Oct. 24, shortly after the organization announced she would succeed David Robinson as head of the nationwide Catholic peace organization.
"We have to acknowledge that, but then we have to be able to find ways to move forward, not just get stuck on the emotional piece of it all," said Sr. Patricia, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Connecticut province.
Her appointment closes Pax Christi's year of transition, which also saw the organization move its national headquarters from Erie, Pa., to Washington in order to work more closely with many Catholic and other faith-based organizations on a variety of justice issues.
