ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
Aug. 08, 2012
By Joshua J. McElwee
ST. LOUIS — The much-anticipated gathering of 900 U.S. Catholic sisters who make up the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) opened here Tuesday night with song, prayer, and references big, small, and in-between to the Vatican’s attempted take-over of the group.
References to the Vatican’s critique of the group, which came in an April 18 announcement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, came early in the two-hour event, with LCWR president Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell telling the assembled that “we don’t have to remind you that our gathering this week is an historic time in the life of this organization.”
The opening of the annual assembly of LCWR, which represents some 80 percent of U.S. women religious, also included a welcome by St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson and details about how the group’s members would discern steps forward during the gathering, which continues through Friday night. …
During an address Tuesday night, Farrell outlined the process by which the group’s members would discuss the Vatican’s mandate in their gathering, saying they want to “gather the collective wisdom of this group to make a response that we hope can be for the good of the church, for the good of LCWR, for the good of religious life throughout the world, and ultimately for the good of the human family.”
Starting Wednesday, LCWR is to host a number of closed door “executive sessions” where members are to discuss the Vatican mandate.
Those meetings, said Farrell, will involve a process “that will be sort of like a seamless garment of discernment.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.