NAIROBI (KENYA)
National Catholic Register
February 22, 2019
By Joan Frawley Desmond
An African woman religious was completing her undergraduate degree at a local university when the unthinkable happened: A religious brother pressured her to have sex.
The issue that led to their routine contact was seemingly benign, but the outcome was anything but.
The young nun “lacked a laptop and had no money to take her work to a typing pool,” said Sister Grace Candiru, of the Missionary Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church, who works with the Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa, a regional body for women religious in 10 African countries.
“For some time, the religious brother agreed to help her with his laptop, and she used it on the university premises,” she said.
“But one day, when she had an urgent assignment and asked to borrow his laptop, he told her to come by his community,” said Sister Grace, who had heard about the young sister’s plight from a contact. “It so happened that the other members of the community were not around. This brother took advantage of this sister, who later conceived.”
After enduring the abuse and a resulting pregnancy, said Sister Grace, the woman religious had no choice but “to leave the congregation.” The story highlights a tragic reality faced by women religious, mostly in parts of the developing world. Missionary religious orders there may struggle to provide sufficient financial independence and formation to effectively safeguard their members from manipulative and predatory clerics.
This problem is not new, but it could become a key priority for Pope Francis, who made headlines after he acknowledged that women religious had been victims of sexual abuse by priests during a news conference on his flight back from his Feb. 3-5 visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.