Women religious who cook and clean for cardinals and bishops are being exploited and underappreciated, a Vatican magazine has said.
“Sisters are seen as volunteers that one can have available as one wishes, which gives rise to genuine abuses of power,” said a nun identified only as Sister Cecile. Her testimony appeared in the monthly magazine Women Church World, published in conjunction with the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Sister Cecile was one of three women religious interviewed pseudonymously for the article, entitled “The (almost) free work of nuns”, which described how religious women were often chosen to provide domestic services for cardinals, bishops and parishes but with little or no financial compensation to their religious orders, no contractual arrangements and no formal work schedule.
“The idea that religious women don’t work with a contract, that they are there for good, that conditions are not stipulated,” Sister Marie said, created situations marked by “ambiguity and often great injustice”.
The long history of religious congregations built on the spirit of freely serving and giving oneself for others has created for some people the belief that compensation has no place “in the natural order of things for whatever service we offer,” Sister Cecile said.
But without compensation, Sister Paule said, female religious communities would not have the resources needed to support their members. Even priests ask Sisters for a nominal donation for saying Mass, Sister Cecile said, noting she now requests compensation for speaking engagements.
Sister Marie asked how a priest could let a woman religious serve him his meal and then “let her eat alone in the kitchen once he has been served.”
She said: “Is our consecration not the same as theirs?”
Demonic activity is on the rise in Italy, says exorcist
A pontifical university in Rome is planning a major conference on exorcisms, as experts warn that more and more priests are needed to combat demonic influence.
Next month the Regina Apostolorum University will host a conference on exorcism and demonic activity, at which Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, will speak.
Italy needs more trained exorcists after a surge in occult activity, according to a priest who trains exorcists for the diocese of Palermo.
Fr Benigno Palilla told Vatican Radio that more and more Italians were turning to spiritually dangerous activities.
The consumer organisation Codacons say that 13 million Italians – about a quarter of the adult population – have visited astrologers, fortune tellers and tarot card readers – which, Fr Palilla remarked, can “open the door to the devil and to possession”.
Vatican Radio suggested that there are about half a million requests for exorcists each year, though only a small minority will actually need prayers of deliverance, let alone a full exorcism. Often the cause will be a psychological or spiritual problem.
Cardinal joins fashion queens
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi last week joined designer Donatella Versace and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour for a preview of the papal vestments and tiaras that will go on display at the New York Met in May. The exhibition, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, includes Benedict XV’s white silk cape and the diamond-studded mitre of Pope Leo XIII. They were displayed at the Palazzo Colonna, a former papal residence in Rome.
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