Piazza - If Nuns Ruled the World

Ten Sisters on a Mission

To Simone, Megan, Tesa, Nora, Dianna, Madonna,

Donna, Joan, Maureen, and Jeannine.

If nuns ruled the world, I have no doubt it would be

a fairer place.

Contents

Authors Note

S t rictly speaking, women religious refers to all women in the Church who have taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. By the strictest of definitions, nuns are a subset of women religious who are cloistered, contemplative, and dedicated to a life of prayer. Sisters are another subset, who pursue active work out in the world. However, these words have become so colloquially interchanged within and outside of the Church that we use them as synonyms here.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotes are from the New American Standard Bible.

Copyright 2014 by Jo Piazza

Cover design by Mauricio Daz

978-1-4532-8764-4

Published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.

Dorothy Day

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Mother Teresa

Introduction

I n December of 2013 the newly elected Pope Francis won out over NSA leaker Edward Snowden, gay-rights activist Edith Windsor, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and US president Barack Obama to be named Time magazines Person of the Year.

He took the name of a humble saint and then called for a church of healing, Time wrote in its announcement about the decision. The septuagenarian superstar is poised to transform a place that measures change by the century.

Ever since Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit from Argentina, assumed the papacy in March of that same year, he was lauded as a potential reformer, praised for backing away from a focus on doctrine and moving toward a reinvigorated focus on service and compassion for the poor. And within a very short amount of time his actions began to help change the perception of the Church as out-of-touch.

This focus on compassion, along with a general aura of merriment not always associated with princes of the church, has made Francis something of a rock star, wrote Time editor Nancy Gibbs.

He washed the feet of female convicts and opted to drive around in a used 1984 Renault. He chose to live in a Vatican hotel, rather than the fancy Apostolic palace. He eschews the security squadrons of the popes before him and takes selfies with his adoring fans.

The new pope was hailed as a progressive icon, and yet on the subject of women in the Church, he remained loyal to a long-held and antiquated stance: women cannot become priests.

The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion, he said in his first apostolic exhortation in November 2013. He insisted he wanted women and their feminine genius to contribute to the Church in other ways, just not as priests.

This book is about the feminine genius in the Catholic Church.

Catholic sisters and nuns rarely receive banner headlines or magazine covers. They eschew the spotlight by their very nature, and yet theyre out there in the world every day, living the Gospel and caring for the poor. They dont hide behind fancy and expensive vestments, a pulpit, or a sermon. I have never met a nun who drives a Mercedes-Benz or a Cadillac. They walk a lot; they ride bikes.

Each woman profiled in this book deserves her own magazine cover. When we went to press, Sister Madonna Buder, at eighty-three years old, had competed in forty-six Ironman races. Sister Megan Rice, also eighty-three, was slated to spend the rest of her life in prison for staying strong in her beliefs that nuclear weapons need to be eliminated from the world. Sister Simone Campbell of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby, drove across the country during the 2012 presidential election to stand up to vice presidential candidate Paul Ryans social-service-slashing budget plan. Sister Joan Dawber was running a safe house for victims of human trafficking, and Sister Tesa Fitzgerald had just completed a $9 million luxury apartment building to provide affordable housing to female ex-felons and their children.

Writing in the New York Times in 2012, Beliefs columnist Mark Oppenheimer described the American attitude toward nuns as a a safe nostalgia... [a] curiosity that we reserve for endangered species, like manatees, or Shakers.

Just as we were going to press with this book, the Internet exploded in a viral media frenzy over twenty-five-year- old Sister Cristina Scuccia. The Sicilian Ursuline sister appeared on the blind auditions for the Italian version of the reality television show The Voice , bopping around onstage in a full black habit to Alicia Keyss hit No One, with perfect pitch and moves that rivaled Justin Biebers. Within days the YouTube video of the audition received more than 19 million views. The world gushed over her. For when you want a taste of sister act! tweeted Whoopi Goldberg, the star of the movie Sister Act . The Vaticans minister of culture Gianfranco Ravasi also tweeted his admiration and even added a hashtag. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others (1 Peter 4:10) #suorcristina.

No fewer than thirty-seven people sent me a link to Sister Cristinas video.

Can you believe this? they wrote. A nun! It was the same incredulous tone people use when they send you a video of the unlikely friendship between a dog and a wallaby or an astronaut singing David Bowies Space Oddity while actually in space. The video of Sister Cristina getting down to Alicia Keys on television was such an oddity in itself that it jarred and excited people.

Three months later, Sister Cristina was crowned the winner of the Italian Voice , an honor that was accompanied by the promise of a recording contract with Universal Records. Learning of her win onstage, she gave the audience a thumps-up. Then she recited the Lords Prayer.

The last word of thanks, the most important, goes of course to Him in heaven, she said. And my dream is to recite a Padre Nostro together... I want Jesus to enter into this.

Her run on the show didnt pass without controversy. The more conservative Catholics castigated Cristina for wearing her habit onstage, while others brushed her off as a silly gimmick in a world of reality television shows desperate for ratings.

But Sister Cristina took to that stage and shattered stereotypes of Catholic nuns held by millions of people around the world. She did it in her way, and the nuns in these pages do it in theirs.