Apostolic Visitation of Women Religious

How you can help:

Ann Carey, author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities, has set up a Yahoo Group that allows loyal Catholic nuns to contact each other, exchange news about their orders, and provide information to the Vatican—all while preserving their own anonymity.

Why, you might ask, would the good sisters want to remain anonymous? Because they live in communities dominated by radical feminism, and they fear reprisals if they dare to speak out in defense of Catholic tradition. That’s a measure of how thoroughly many religious orders have been corrupted by the spirit of the age. It’s also an indication of how urgent it is to provide some guidance for these communities—and, not incidentally, some support for the poor nuns (in most cases elderly) who are living through the chaos.

Learn more about Sisters Supporting Apostolic Visitation here. Perhaps you know a few nuns who should be introduced to the group.

This is all the more important when the head of the visitation must prompt the communities of women religious to cooperate with the visitation:

The American nun who has been appointed by the Vatican to conduct an apostolic visitation of American women’s religious orders has written to the leaders of women’s religious communities, asking for their cooperation in the inquiry. Mother Mary Clare Millea’s letter, dated January 12, implicitly acknowledges that many religious orders have failed to respond to earlier requests. Mother Millea was appointed by the Congregation for Religious to head the apostolic visitation. Last year she sent questionnaires to the leaders of women’s religious orders, asking that they be returned by November 20. Many religious orders, joining in a refusal to cooperate with the Vatican inquiry, did not respond.

The next step, should the recalcitrance continue, seems remarkably unclear. A case by case investigation, which could drag on for years? Some mechanism for faithful religious to exit their orders, enter into faithful orders, and the closure or permitted extinction of existing orders? Or some sort of special mandate to the bishops to handle the problems in targeted communities and notify the Vatican of action taken by a certain deadline?