ROME
GlobalPost
Jason Berry
Should Pope Francis continue a punitive strike against the mainstream organization of American nuns? Is the survival of the group representing 57,000 liberal US nuns even on His Holiness’ radar screen? And if not, how do the group’s leaders put it there?
These questions will be hovering when the pope meets Wednesday morning with 800 women superiors of religious orders across the globe for one hour, before his weekly audience that draws 10 times as many people. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious — an American organization — has four members in the International Union of Superiors General, representing 700,000 sisters from across the world.
In April 2012 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — historically, the office that monitors strict compliance with church teaching — put the LCWR under supervision, a kind of receivership.
CDF prefect Cardinal William Levada, who soon retired to a condo in California, scored members of the LCWR for “radical feminist” initiatives; he appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to vet their writings, speakers and rewrite their guidelines.
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