![]() "I think the movement of #MeToo has absolutely an influence on the fact that the abuse of nuns comes into the press and on the public forum," says Karlijn Demasure, a Belgian expert on sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults who teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. In Chile, the Vatican is investigating a small order of nuns afterĪ national TV channel revealed some sisters had been kicked out after reporting sexual abuse by priests.Īn investigation by The Associated Press last summerįound the Vatican had not punished offenders for abuse of nuns in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. In India, a nun has reported a bishop to police, accusing him of raping her more than a dozen times. International Union Superiors General, the organization that represents the world's female Catholic religious orders, urged sisters to defyĪ "culture of silence and secrecy" and speak out. "The pope spoke out about abuse of nuns, and now the whole church must also denounce these terrible things," she said. Peter's Square on a recent Sunday morning, a Mexican nun, Sister Silvia Lopez, was thrilled the pope had made public what, among nuns, has long been a painful secret. Pope Francis during his weekly general audience at Saint Peter's Square on Feb. Publicized another report, from 1998, titled "The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and in Rome." O'Donohue briefed Vatican officials on her findings, but the document was shelved. She also reported that a priest arranged for a nun to have an abortion the nun died during the abortion, and the priest then officiated at her funeral. She cited a 1988 case from Malawi, where a bishop dismissed the leaders of a women's religious order because they complained that 29 nuns had been made pregnant by local priests. In the report, O'Donohue, who died in 2015, linked sexual abuse of nuns in Africa to the AIDS epidemic: Religious sisters were considered less likely to carry the virus. Her report covered more than 20 countries - mostly in Africa, but also Ireland, Italy, the Philippines and the United States. The first extensive report on abuse of women in the church was in 1994 by an Irish nun, Sister Maura O'Donohue. Women Church World,describes women's treatment inside the male Vatican world this way: "We are unobserved, invisible, ignored and not respected." They climb up a career staircase toward evil." "The Vatican is a world of men," she says. "These nuns believe they're the guilty ones for having seduced that holy man into committing sin, because that's what they've always been taught," says Lucetta Scaraffia, the editor of a women's supplement to the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. Thomas in Rome, says the abuse is the result of male domination in church leadership. Sister Catherine Aubin, a French Dominican nun who teaches theology at the Pontifical University of St. "We are unobserved, invisible, ignored and not respected" "Sometimes they're forced to have abortions - paid by the priest because nuns have no money." "These poor women are forced to leave their order and live alone raising their child with no help," she says. "These nuns believe they're the guilty ones for having seduced that holy man into committing sin," she says, "because that's what they've always been taught."Īdding to the trauma, she says, raped nuns who get pregnant become outcasts from their orders. It's very hard for a nun to report she has been raped by a priest, says Scaraffia, because of the mindset that, in sex, women can always say no. The piece was based on hundreds of stories she heard from nuns. An article in the February issue by editor Lucetta Scaraffia - a history professor, mother and feminist - blamed abuse of women and minors on the clerical culture of the all-powerful priesthood. Women Church World,a supplement of the official Vatican daily, The Vatican's wall of silence was first broken in ![]() It's an issue that had long been kept under wraps, but in the #MeToo era, a #NunsToo movement has emerged, and now sexual abuse is more widely discussed. In February, Pope Francis acknowledged a longstanding dirty secret in the Roman Catholic Church - the sexual abuse of nuns by priests.
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