Is Sisterhood Powerful? Vatican newspaper questions church treatment of women religious

In an interesting March story, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published a thoughtful article on the work of women religious in the church. “The (almost) free work of sisters” posed difficult questions about the wages, working conditions and respect given those who perform so much of the church’s labor. Reporter Marie-Lucile Kubacki interviewed some of the religious sisters who teach in schools, tend the sick in hospitals, and even cook and clean for senior prelates. Sister Marie (a pseudonym) told Kubacki:

I often receive sisters in situations of domestic service that are definitely given little recognition. Some of them serve in bishops’ or cardinals’ residences… Does an ecclesiastic think about having himself served a meal by the sister who works for him and then leaving her to eat alone in the kitchen once he has been served? Is it normal for a consecrated man to be served in this manner by another consecrated person? And knowing that consecrated people destined for domestic work are almost always women religious?

Sr. Paule added that unlike most other Italian workers, often

the sisters do not have a contract or an agreement with the bishops or parish priests for whom they work… they are paid little or nothing. This happens in schools or doctors’ offices and more often in pastoral work or when the sisters take care of the cooking and housework in the bishop’s residence or in the parish. … The greatest problem is simply how to live in a community and how to enable it to live, how to provide the necessary funds for the religious and professional formation of its members, how to establish who pays and how to pay the bills when sisters are ill or need treatment because they are incapacitated by old age, as well as how to find resources to carry out the mission according to their charism.

CLICK HERE to read “The (almost) free work of sisters”