Vatican report on U.S. nuns to be released Dec. 16

By Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press
December 3, 2014

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/12/03/american-catholic-nuns-investigation/19856767/

The Rev. Thomas Rosica. He is the president of Windsor's Assumption University and CEO of Salt and Light Catholic Media in Canada. He is also an English language assistant for the Vatican, and from Windsor and the Vatican helps distribute and explain Vatican announcements

On at least one front, the Vatican's perceived war against America's Catholic nuns may have reached a peace settlement.

On Dec. 16 at the Vatican, top Catholic church officials and three American nuns, including one from Michigan, will hold a press conference to publicly reveal the final report of a five-year investigation of congregations of Catholic sisters in the U.S., the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman told the Free Press.

The inquiry of nuns, known as an Apostolic Visitation, sparked a vast outcry by many American Catholics, who viewed it as an attack on the workhorses of the Catholic church, the women who taught and ministered to generations of Catholics and help run parishes and social outreach programs to society's poor and marginalized.

Rosica, president of Windsor's Assumption University, said he could not divulge contents of the report, but said it should allay the fears of many Catholic sisters about the investigation.

"It will hopefully be a very positive message for women religious in the United States," Rosica said Tuesday, after he spoke at Detroit's Catholic Cristo Rey High School, where he received hundreds of letters from students inviting Pope Francis to visit Detroit in 2015.

The investigation began in 2009 during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI when the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life sent teams to mother houses across the country, including the Adrian Dominicans in southeastern Michigan, to quiz them about their practices and beliefs.

"There were a lot of unfounded fears," about the process, said Rosica. He said the report will be made public online and that he expects the Vatican's communication office to formally announce next week about the Dec. 16 conference.

Also on Tuesday, the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life sent out invitations to representatives of American sisters based in Rome for the Dec. 16 conference.

The investigation's conclusion coincides with a declaration by Pope Francis last week declaring the opening of the "Year of Consecrated Life," to put a special emphasis on those who become nuns, priests and brothers.

Still left unresolved, however, is another Vatican controversy involving American nuns.

The Apostolic Visitation report is separate from the ongoing controversy regarding another Vatican office's censure of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization representing the leaders of many progressive congregations of nuns who've been criticized for not doing enough to promote Catholic teachings against gay marriage, contraception and abortion.

"I have nothing to say" about the LCWR, said Rosica, who will help conduct the Dec. 16 announcement. "It's a completely different office."

But issues surrounding the LCWR controversy can't help but be in observers' minds when the Vatican holds its press conference on Dec. 16. That's because of the American nuns who will be at the Vatican to participate.

The press conference will include Sister Sharon Holland, who helps lead the Monroe-based Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) congregation. But Holland is also the current president of the LCWR, and is dealing with a Vatican-appointed panel of bishops empowered now to vet the LCWR's writings and speakers at future gatherings.

Holland has experience as a Vatican insider. A church canon lawyer, Holland was one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican, beginning work in 1988 at the same office which ordered the Apostolic Visitation shortly after she retired in 2009. As a section leader in the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Holland counseled orders of priests, nuns and missionaries on church law. Holland declined Wednesday to comment.

Holland will be joined at the Vatican press conference, said Rosica, by Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, who leads the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. Donovan's organization represents leaders of more traditional congregations and has not clashed with the Vatican. In Michigan, some members congregations include the Felician Sisters of Livonia and the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Alma.

Mother Mary Clare Millea, who led the Apostolic Visitation inquiry for the Vatican, also will be present, said Rosica.

The press conference will include the top two leaders for the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz and Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo.It oversees governance issues for orders of priests and nuns around the world. The Apostolic Visitation investigation began in 2009, under a now-retired leader, Cardinal Franc Rode, who suggested that some congregations had become too liberal and abandoned traditional religious lifestyles.

The process asked American nuns to fill out detailed questionnaires about their practices and beliefs, and sent teams of investigators to a variety of congregations, both traditional and progressive, across the country.

Rosica called Sister Sharon Holland "a great, great woman of faith." And he said that Sister Mary Clare Millea, who led the Apostolic Visitation, is "one of the great women of the church."

Rosica paid tribute to the nuns – members of the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Religious of the Sacred Heart, who taught him when he was growing up in Rochester, N.Y. Rosica is a member of the Basilian order of priests, who locally sponsor Novi Detroit Catholic Central High School and co-sponsor Cristo Rey high.

"I can't imagine my religious life, my priesthood, without the presence of women religious," said Rosica.

Rosica said he was among the people who visited various U.S. congregations as part of the investigation.

"It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I owe my vocation to the presence of sisters in my life,'' said Rosica. He added that meeting so many sisters across the country was also a "very positive way of saying thank you" for the impact nuns had on his choice to become a priest.