The headline at dailymail.co.uk was certainly striking: “Nuns forced to become PROSTITUTES after they were ‘abandoned’ by the Catholic Church have been sheltered at a secret Vatican residence for more than a year, cardinal reveals.”

The headline was based on an interview with Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. He told the Vatican magazine Women Church World that religious orders sometimes “completely abandoned” nuns when they left their communities.

“But things are changing,” the cardinal said. “The most significant example is precisely the Pope’s decision to establish in Rome a house to welcome in from the street nuns who were sent away by us, or by the superiors, especially if they are foreigners.”

He added: “These people have entered the convent as nuns and find themselves in this condition. There have even been some cases of turning to prostitution to support themselves. These are ex-nuns!”

This is not the first time that Women Church World has shone a spotlight on the plight of women religious. Under its gutsy editor Lucetta Scaraffia, the magazine gained international attention when it accused Church leaders of using nuns as a source of cheap labor. It followed that by highlighting another taboo topic: the sexual abuse of nuns by clergy.

Scaraffia walked away from the magazine last year, along with the majority of her editorial team, citing “a climate of distrust and progressive delegitimisation”. Elements in the Vatican, she said, had sought to soften the magazine’s editorial line. But Women Church World has not lost its boldness. Its interview with Cardinal Braz de Aviz has once again forced the Church to discuss an issue it prefers to avoid: the mistreatment of nuns.

It is well known that female religious life underwent a dramatic change in the 20th century. In the wake of Vatican II, orders relaxed dress codes and loosened other disciplines seen as hindrances to evangelising the modern world.

Amid the turbulence, numbers plummeted. In 1965, for example, there were roughly 180,000 nuns in the United States. By 2014, there were only 50,000. The decline was not limited to the US, but also affected Europe.

Most institutions would engage in a period of soul-searching if they lost so many members in so short a time. Yet we in the Church have paid relatively little attention to the precipitous fall in the number of nuns, in comparison with the focus on subjects such as the papacy, liturgy and sexual morality. Why did a vocation that has flourished for centuries, and produced some of the greatest figures in Catholic history, implode in the West after Vatican II?

There have been several scholarly attempts to answer that question. Some writers conclude that it was the inevitable outcome of the revolution in women’s roles in the 20th century, others that it was caused by the abrupt abandonment of traditions. Suffice it to say that female religious communities are still feeling the after-effects.

It would be wrong, however, to believe that this vocation is in decline everywhere. A recent study found that the number of professed women religious rose in 99 countries between 2002 and 2007. Numbers increased by 13,542 in Asia, 7,906 in Africa, 1,947 in the Caribbean and 370 in the Middle East.

India, in particular, has emerged as a powerhouse of vocations. Half of the world’s 10 biggest women’s religious institutes are now based in the country. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of professed women religious in India grew by 9,398. According to the Catholic World Report, “While India has nearly 50 million fewer Catholics than the United States does, it has over 30,000 more women religious.”

It would also be a mistake to assume that the picture in the US is uniformly bleak. The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, for instance, cannot build accommodation fast enough to house all their vocations.

It is within this complex picture that we should consider the cardinal’s disturbing revelation. How is it that nuns are ending up homeless in the Eternal City? Why are some even reportedly turning to prostitution? The groundbreaking articles in Women Church World suggest that we haven’t taken the welfare of female religious seriously enough. Perhaps we have simply assumed that all is well, despite the mass of evidence to the contrary. But we can no longer ignore their struggles.

Every day nuns make a vast contribution to the Church. We owe it to them to support them in their hour of need.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-suffering-of-so-many-nuns/