By Raynah Braganza Passanha

Pune, Feb 8, 2022:

Dear Pope Francis,

I write to you with deep respect and love – both for you as a person, the position you hold and especially immense love for Mother Church. I write to you in the spirit of a child responding to a well-meaning instruction from a parent, desiring to present another point of view. I also write to you as a mother…. who sees in every one of the exploited and abused religious sisters, a possible daughter!

The world welcomed your message on the Day of Consecrated Life, inviting religious women ‘to fight when, in some cases you are treated unfairly, even within the church; when you serve so much that you are reduced to servitude, at times, by men of the church!”

My initial reaction was one of warmth, reading the concern of a ‘father’s for his ‘daughters’ encouraging them to stand up for themselves. But then as a mother, my second reaction was, as a father is that all you are going to do about it? Have you trained them to fight? to use their voices to raise dissent? to realize when service becomes servitude?

If you haven’t, then as a responsible parent you need to intervene! I would if someone even threatened to harm the hair on any one of my children, and they are 27 and 30 years old! Mother Church has abysmally failed her daughters religious and otherwise by repeatedly throwing out beautifully sounding words of support and encouragement – hollow without any accompanying action!

Whenever there is a problem, especially one that has affected every branch of a family. whose responsibility is it to work out a solution ….. the VICTIM who is in that position because of her powerlessness and vulnerability, put there by STRUCTURES that promote the exploitation and abuse, that cover up for the abusers, that have no opportunities in place for victims to seek protection and redressal?!

Dear Pope Francis, would Jesus have expected the victim of injustice to fight for their right to justice or would he have challenged the unjust structures himself, challenged them to acknowledge their errors and put in place structures to reach out in compassion to these victims, empower them and accompany them in their fight to recover their dignity and fight established structures created by those you call ‘men of the Church.’

You, dear Pope as ‘Head – Man’ or ‘Papa’ among the Men of the Church are in a better position to rectify the structures that facilitate ‘servitude’ and abuse of women religious and others within the Church. Some things you could do:

1. Establish structures to ensure that these ‘Men 0f the Church’ are trained to be persona Christi not counter witnesses to Christ by their choices – to be abusers, to cover up for abusers, to blame victims!

2. Establish structures to hold them accountable and punishable when they are perpetrators of crimes against the body of Christ every time they abuse another child of God.

3. Take concrete action to challenge all those that tell you lies and stand between you hearing the loud cries and pain and pleas for help sent to you, that prevent you from seeing the broken spirits of those wounded by abuse and harassment by the ‘Men in the Church’ [and the women leaders at times] in their numerous communications to you – their Papa. A number of these FILTERS / BARRIERS to the cries reaching you are part of your own inner circle and their established systems of preventing women’s cries from reaching you, as they too are complicit in permitting servitude and abuse in their own little kingdoms. Take the time to go to the Voices of Faith Channel of YouTube where during the 16 days of activism against violence in November, they recorded stories of religious sisters that were so painful and poignant, they brought tears to my eyes … I saw my daughter in each one of them telling their stories of shame, guilt, pain and helplessness. And I felt the ache of being unable to reach out!

4. We women, pray that you will be open to the Spirit to help you discern how to address this situation without putting the onus on the ‘WOMEN RELIGIOUS TO FIGHT SERVITUDE’. IF THEY COULD THEY WOULDN’T BE IN THE POSITION THEY ARE – be it in their own communities, harassed by their own authoritarian leaders or in institutions, at the hands of the ‘men of the Church’ you speak about.

5. Finally dear Pope Francis, Mother Church needs the wisdom and perception of women and needs to hear their voices. Rendering 50% of the body of Christ voiceless denies them their right to enjoy fullness of being part of the body of Christ!

If you find it difficult with your advisory circle of ‘Men of the Church’ to come up with solutions to RENEW the CHURCH according to the vision and compassionate mind and heart of Christ, a heart that understood pain as well as injustice especially when it occurred ‘in his Father’s house’ …. PLEASE DO CALL ON US WOMEN! We are more than capable, if given our rightful opportunity and space, to not only stop servitude, abuse, and harassment by “men of the church’ but also to assist you in cleansing the church as Jesus cleansed the temple to make it worthy in his father’s eyes……

Only please don’t abdicate responsibility by asking Victims to fight the well-established unjust structures that distort the Church – the Body of Christ… or ask the faithful to pray the month of February ‘for religious sisters and consecrated women, thanking them for their mission and their courage; may they continue to find new responses to the challenges of our times’.

Please, Pope Francis, we women want no more words…They wound more than they heal because it means not even ‘papa’ is going to do something about our pain. He too is just one of the ‘men of the church’!

Christ accompanied, Christ challenged, Christ empowered! Christ acted!. We look forward to you doing the same.

Your daughter in faith,

Raynah