Pope cites new book on nun abuse in warning to superiors

ROME — Pope Francis connected Saturday drew attraction to a occupation that the Vatican has agelong sought to downplay: the abuses of powerfulness by parent superiors against nuns who, due to the fact that of their vows of obedience, person small recourse but to obey.

During an assemblage with members of the Vatican’s congregation for spiritual orders, Francis cited a caller investigative exposure of the occupation written by a newsman for the Holy See’s media, Salvatore Cernuzio.

Francis noted that the book, “Veil of Silence: Abuse, Violence, Frustrations successful Female Religious Life,” doesn’t item “striking” cases of unit and maltreatment “but alternatively the mundane abuses that harm the spot of the vocation.”

The book, published successful Italy past month, contains 11 cases of existent oregon erstwhile spiritual sisters who suffered abuses astatine the hands of their superiors. Most were intelligence and spiritual abuses and often resulted successful the women leaving oregon being thrown retired of their communities and questioning their religion successful God and the church. Some ended up connected the streets, others recovered refuge successful a location for abused women.

The publication follows an nonfiction connected the aforesaid taxable by the Vatican-approved Jesuit diary La Civilta Cattolica successful 2020 and earlier reports successful the Vatican’s women’s mag astir the intersexual maltreatment of nuns by priests and exploitation of them by the antheral religion hierarchy for escaped home labor.

The caller publication peels backmost different furniture of the much insidious forms of intelligence abuses committed by superiors against their ain nuns, which person agelong been covered up by a veil of secrecy. It contains a devastatingly effort by 1 of the highest-ranking women astatine the Vatican, Sister Natalie Becquart, who said the cases indispensable unit the religion to look astatine the sometimes toxic world of beingness successful spiritual orders, thin to the victims and forestall aboriginal abuses from occuring.

She said it besides reinforces the request for the Catholic hierarchy to guarantee that priests and nuns are trained successful the close mode to workout obedience and authority, saying the erroneous exertion of some had led to the problem.

Francis has tried to ace down connected the near-absolute powerfulness enjoyed by spiritual and laic superiors arsenic good arsenic the proliferation of caller spiritual movements, immoderate of which person seen horrific cases of sexual, spiritual and different forms of maltreatment committed by their charismatic founders. The Vatican has precocious imposed word limits for leaders and is applying a much rigorous process for caller groups to beryllium approved successful the church.

The Jesuit pope, who knows good the dynamic of spiritual assemblage life, told the members of the Vatican congregation Saturday that determination is ever the menace that founders of spiritual orders oregon caller spiritual movements volition presume excessively overmuch powerfulness and workout it improperly.

The risk, helium warned, is that they assertion to beryllium the lone ones who tin construe the peculiar tone of the question “as if they were supra the church.”