UNITED STATES
GlobalPost
Jason Berry
Apr 16, 2015
The Vatican’s controversial takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — which represents 53,000 nuns, America’s largest group of sisters — halted in Rome today, ending a four year standoff.
The nuns won.
Both sides have agreed not to give interviews for 30 days, according to an LCWR spokeswoman.
What a difference a papacy makes.
In a photograph circulated by the Vatican City newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, four sisters sit smiling across from Pope Francis, none wearing habits. The pope also smiles, but made no statement and is not quoted in the documents released by the LCWR, and Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that polices theologians and church officials on doctrinal disputes.
“Pope Francis met with them for fifty minutes,” FutureChurch co-founder Sister Christine Schenk told GroundTruth. “We’ve never had the leadership meet in a private office with the pope. That is a very significant valuing of the leadership and the role of women in the church. On balance, there are tremendous positives from this resolution.”
Under Pope Benedict, the CDF announced in 2012 that Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain would function as LCWR overseer, approving their literature and vetting conference speakers. It was strikingly blunt, scolding the women superiors for “radical, feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” …
“A broad range of Catholic foundations privately expressed to bishops and cardinals their utter dismay and strong opposition to this wholly unnecessary investigation of women religious,” a prominent philanthropist who spoke on background told GroundTruth earlier this year.
A number of foundations offered assistance, either materially or in advisory capacities, to mother superiors whose communities were selling assets to manage long-term elder care as their numbers declined.
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation — which has provided major support to National Catholic Reporter for its Global Sisters Report coverage — also awarded $2.5 million to the National Religious Retirement Office, which assists religious communities in America in bridging the gap in retirement fund shortfalls.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Levada, Archbishop Sartain and Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair — a key investigator of LCWR — had all been tarnished with media coverage of their giving soft-glove treatment to clergy sex abusers. Levada had the dubious distinction, while San Francisco prelate, of being the only bishop in America to be successfully sued by a priest who claimed whistle-blower status after Levada removed him from his parish for reporting his pastor to police for alleged advances on a youth.
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