Holding their breath: American nuns wait for the release of Vatican report

By Abby Ohlheiser
WashingtPost
December 16, 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/16/holding-their-breath-american-nuns-wait-for-the-release-of-vatican-report/

Pope Francis last month in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican

The Vatican will release a much-anticipated report on Tuesday examining the lives of American nuns.

The report, known officially as an Apostolic Visitation, angered many American Catholics when it was announced in 2008 — many viewed it as an attack on the mission of American women religious – the proper Catholic term for nuns – who often work with marginalized communities, and in education and hospitals. But, according to some leading U.S. nuns, attitudes changed during the investigation and, on the eve of the report’s release, many sisters were feeling less defensive.

“We still feel pretty hurt, bewildered, angry and betrayed,” said Sister Simone Campbell, who is executive director of the group Network and is best known for leading “Nuns on the Bus” road trips. “But what happened as a result of it is Catholic sisters came together and we’re more connected. Out of the pain and hurt comes a greater sense of solidarity.”

At this point, it’s not clear what the report will say or what recommendations — if any — it will make. But the number of nuns has plummeted in recent decades: Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate estimates that there are now 49,883 women religious in the United States, compared with about 180,000 in the mid-’60s. The potential topics addressed, however, are broad: For instance, one Vatican leader has said the report would potentially look at American nuns’ “secularist mentality.” The report could touch on topics from religiosity to recruiting.

Although Sister Simone said late Monday that she was “holding her breath” until the report emerged, she noted that many were “hopeful” about its content in part because of the way in which the Vatican has chosen to announce the results: during a news conference at the Vatican, with the full report released online shortly after. The Rev. Thomas Rosica, who serves as an English-language spokesman for the Vatican and who participated in the review as a site visitor, told the Detroit Free Press that the report “will hopefully be a very positive message for women religious in the United States.”

The investigation involved questionnaires and site visits to organizations representing about half of the 50,000 women religious in the United States. Although in 2008, Cardinal Franc Rodé, the leader of the Vatican’s committee on religious life – which includes nuns and priests — initially said that the report was simply designed to “look into the quality of the life of religious women in the United States,” he later said that the report was also concerned with what he termed a “secularist mentality”  among nuns. The visitation had the backing of then-Pope Benedict XVI.
The visitation report set for release Tuesday is unlikely to offer specific conclusions about religious orders or leaders among American women religious, as the Web site Crux explained in its primer. The Vatican is also conducting a separate review specifically looking at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents the vast majority of American nuns, through a different Vatican department that is seen as more likely to offer such conclusions.

In the lead-up to the visitation report’s release, many women religious are emphasizing the positive results of the visitation that probably won’t be contained in the actual document.

“It doesn’t justify the way it was done, but we found our mature voice. In speaking what we believe, we discovered our true selves,”  Mary Ann Zollman of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said in a panel discussion last week on the visitation process. “This wasn’t about one religious congregation or religious organization. It was about all of us together. . . . It created a sense of solidarity and sisterhood. And the same was true with our relationship with the laity – we discovered a communal vision for the church and the world.”

Zollman, along with 1o other women religious, spoke at Loyola University in Chicago last week to promote their book on the experience, “Power of Sisterhood: Women Religious Tell the Story of the Apostolic Visitation,” as described by the National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report. Several panelists spoke of the unity that emerged from the process, a unity directed outwardly to the sisters’ mission in their communities, as opposed to toward the American nuns’ relationship with the Vatican.

Sister Simone echoed that sentiment, saying that the visitation helped give American women religious the connections and confidence in each other to participate in a shared project like Nuns on the Bus. “The thing to know is that regardless of what the institution says, Catholic sisters stay faithful to service,” Sister Simone said. “And in a society where approval from the top often shuts things down, that’s a pretty strong witness to something deeper than politics.” She added that the visitation, along with the impending report, were “just church politics, but our call to service is bigger than church politics.”