By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
[Rome – CNS) — With prayer and laughter, songs and furrowed brows, more than 500 superiors of women’s religious orders from around the world gathered in Rome to talk about the challenges they face and the gift those challenges represent for their congregations, the Catholic Church and the world.
Wearing a sari or bright batik skirt or a long black habit or slacks, members of the International Union of Superiors General were meeting May 2-6 and exploring the theme, “Embracing Vulnerability on the Synodal Journey.”
More than 700 superiors were registered for the plenary assembly; 516 of the sisters attended the meeting in person, and the others followed online.
Sr. María Rita Calvo Sanz, superior general of the Sisters of the Company of Mary, Our Lady, greets Sir. Monica Joseph, superior of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus-Mary, during a coffee break as superiors of women’s religious orders meet for the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superior Generals in Rome May 3, 2022. More than 500 superiors were in attendance, with hundreds participating online. (CNS photo by Paul Haring)
The meeting began with theological and practical explorations of vulnerability and ways the experience of humility, weakness, brokenness and discrimination mirrors the self-emptying of Christ and puts one in solidarity with the poor and excluded.
“Pope Francis’ call to the synodal process is ultimately a renewed call to mission, but not from the hitherto held position of power and authority,” Sr. Anne Falola, a Nigerian member of the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Apostles, said May 2.
The communion, participation and mission that are the hallmarks of a synodal church, she said, “cannot be achieved without accepting and embracing our vulnerability.”
Falola told the superiors that there are two forms of vulnerability — “from above,” which involves renouncing the power, honour or rights one legitimately has — and “from below,” which involves accepting one’s limitations and imperfections.
In her own life, she said, she has had to embrace “my own vulnerability as a woman within a patriarchal society and church, an African in a world of global power tussles, a religious in a world of growing religious indifference and intolerance, a missionary in a xenophobic world and one called to the periphery in a world where only the center matters.”
“The prophetic nature of religious life calls us as superiors general or congregational leaders to mobilize ourselves as a global sisterhood … Our interdependence and our growing understanding of the importance of our intercultural prophetic witness invite us to develop ways of building communion in diversity in today’s world.” – Sr. Jolanta Kafka, president of the UISG
Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, told the superiors May 3 that their organization has been operating in a synodal manner since its founding more than 50 years ago, recognizing each other as sisters and accepting differences among them as something that enriches them all.
Before giving his speech, the cardinal celebrated Mass with the sisters, focusing his homily on the hallmarks of discipleship: fidelity to the teaching of the apostles; promoting communion in the church, with and under the pope; treasuring the Eucharist, “the sign that God wants to be near us always”; and trusting in God’s love.
Claretian Sister Jolanta Kafka, president of the UISG, told the superiors that decades of experience, including experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, had made the sisters increasingly aware that “we can bring our concerns about the needs of people and the planet to many different meetings and contexts.”
“The prophetic nature of religious life calls us as superiors general or congregational leaders to mobilize ourselves as a global sisterhood,” she said. “Our interdependence and our growing understanding of the importance of our intercultural prophetic witness invite us to develop ways of building communion in diversity in today’s world.”
Sr. Nurya Martinez-Gayol Fernández, a Spanish member of the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus, told the superiors that as women with a specific spirituality defined by their founders and passed on by generations of their members, they have an important contribution to make to the larger church as it looks at fostering the spirituality that must underpin synodality.
Spirituality is “the frame of mind with which we face reality” and even try to take charge of it, she said, while “synodality denotes a way of living and acting that defines the ecclesial community in its relationships.”
Part of accepting vulnerability, she said, is preparing oneself and one’s community for the inevitable disappointment that will come as efforts to create a more synodal church hit snags or delays or outright opposition.
Synodality, she said, “calls for specialists in patience.”
Related: Synod experience varies for parishes and groups across the diocese of Saskatoon
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Pope Francis is pushed in a wheelchair by his aide, Sandro Mariotti, as he greets participants in the plenary assembly of the women’s International Union of Superiors General (UISG) at the Vatican May 5, 2022. (CNS photo by Vatican Media)
All in: women’s religious orders invest in synod process
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – Catholic News Service) — The leaders of religious orders around the world are taking very seriously not only preparations for the Synod of Bishops assembly in 2023, but the whole idea of making the Catholic Church more “synodal” — a place where everyone is called to prayer, discernment and responsibility for the church and its mission.
More than 500 leaders of women’s congregations met in Rome in early May for the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General and focused on the contributions they can bring to the synodal process, particularly given their “vulnerability” with declining numbers in most places and their lack of power and status.
“There’s a huge amount of energy in religious life, both from the men and the women, and a tremendous investment in the synodal process,” said Sr. Gemma Simmonds, a member of the Congregation of Jesus, who is one of four religious charged with synthesizing contributions from hundreds of religious communities for a joint contribution to the Synod of Bishops from both the women’s and men’s international unions of superiors.
“Some of the responses point out that of course, synodality is part and parcel of religious life,” said Simmonds, director of the Religious Life Institute at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge, England. For instance, Simmonds said, the Rule of St. Benedict allows an abbot or abbess and his or her council to make decisions on unimportant matters, but requires them to consult the whole community, including the youngest monks or nuns, on anything important.
Sister Gemma Simmonds, a member of the Congregation of Jesus and director of the Religious Life Institute at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge, England, is pictured in Rome May 4, 2022. She is part of a joint commission of the international unions of superiors general of women’s and men’s religious orders compiling and synthesizing input from religious as part of the process leading up to the Synod of Bishops in 2023. (CNS photo by Paul Haring)
They also model for the whole church a life animated by personal and communal prayer; living and working in a group of people of different ages and from different cultural backgrounds; constant collaboration with bishops, priests and laypeople in carrying out their mission; outreach to the poor and those on the margins of society; and, increasingly, joint projects with other religious congregations that may have vastly different charisms.
The “vulnerability” of religious orders also means their members are used to change or transformation, something which the synodal process also envisions.
Jessie Rogers, dean of the faculty of theology at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, told the sisters May 4 that adapting their mission and structures in light of modern challenges requires wisdom and fidelity — not rigidity — and the same virtues are needed in moving toward a more synodal church.
“You are nourished by the traditions which have shaped you, by your founding charisms, and by your own personal stories in which you have come to know God,” Rogers told the sisters. “That history gives you a firm place to stand; it has shaped your understanding of God and how God works.”
“Such knowledge is key to being able to recognize God’s footprints. The God you have come to know is the God who will take the story further. But this God cannot be limited to what you know already,” she said, adding that believers cannot “trap the future in the cage of the past.”
And, particularly relevant to religious orders and the church as a whole is a recognition that “not everything in the past can be brought out as a treasure,” Rogers said. “Freedom requires the courage to face the darkness in our past, individually and collectively. For what do we need to give and receive forgiveness? What must we relinquish?”
“We can remain rooted in the life-giving dimensions of the past without trying to justify those parts of it that are broken and harmful or that no longer serve us well,” she said.
While Simmonds could not share details of the synod input from the women’s and men’s communities because the report has not been completed, she said “everything” resonated with her and her experience or observations of religious life, including reports by women of doing the heavy lifting in a variety of pastoral projects or even fundraising and then being “airbrushed out of the picture” when success is reported.
Sisters also reported problems with bishops deciding to close schools, hospitals or other institutions without consulting the sisters who had operated them for decades, and even bishops or priests using “access to the sacraments” to force sisters into accepting their decisions.
“This is a grotesque injustice that should not be tolerated among the people of God,” she said.
But while the submissions to the synod were honest, they did not focus exclusively on problems, Simmonds said.
“What also came across is the appreciation of how powerful it is when religious do collaborative work with laypeople, with clergy, with bishops,” she said. “It is there over and over again, the evidence that this works; it’s good. It’s good for the people. It’s good for the mission. It’s good for the church. What’s not to like?”
The responses make clear that charisms given by God to the founders of religious orders and shared with their members for decades or centuries can remain alive and active in the church by sharing them with others, she said.
Through the religious and the laity who share their spirituality, “Benedict and Francis and Mary Ward and Louise de Marillac are still alive in the world.”
Pope Francis greets Claretian Missionary Sister Jolanta Kafka, president of the International Union of Superiors General, during an audience with participants in the plenary assembly of the UISG at the Vatican May 5, 2022. (CNS photo by Vatican Media)
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