After Joe Biden left, media coverage of the Nuns on the Bus” tour fell largely on the shoulders of local media outlets, as well as Global Sisters Report. But women religious have been making other news this week as well.
Sister Cristina - coming soon
Remember Sr. Cristina Scuccia, the Ursuline nun who won first place a few months ago on the Italian version of “The Voice”?
Well, she’s been in the recording studio lately, and Universal Music has released a snippet of promotional video for her first album.
It shows Scuccia in a studio getting ready to sing the Alicia Keys song, “No One,” the very song that shot her to fame on the show. That performance has been viewed more than 57 million times on YouTube.
Scuccia renewed her vows with the Congregation of Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart in July and will make her perpetual vows in 2018.
Her album is due out later this year. Click here to see the 18-second video.
On second thought?
The women religious who operate Marian High School in Bloomfield, Mich., have had a public relations problem on their hands in recent weeks.
Barbara Webb, a gay teacher at the all-girls Catholic school, publicly accused the school of firing her in August because of her nontraditional pregnancy. The move kicked up a bit of controversy, spawning a petition, a Facebook page supporting the teacher, and protests at the school, where Webb was a popular chemistry teacher.
Webb told the media that even though her termination letter gave no reason for her dismissal, administrators had talked to her about the school’s morality clause that allows staff to be fired over public conduct of “lifestyle or actions directly contradictory to the Catholic faith.”
But this week, the Detroit Free Press reports, the president of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sent a letter to alums that suggests that change is on the way.
“Pope Francis has brought a sense of hope to our lives and encourages us to look at our Church with new eyes,” Sr. Mary Jane Herb reportedly writes in the letter.
“No, it is not likely that doctrine will change, however the Pope emphasizes that the values of mercy, inclusion and compassion need to be included in our response to complex situations.”
She wrote that the school’s leadership will “re-examine policies and procedures in light of Catholic identity and IHM values. When situations such as the one that emerged recently occur, the IHM community will provide a team of consultants to work with the administration.”
The sisters declined to comment to the Free Press about the letter. But Webb, who is now substitute teaching in metro Detroit schools, told the newspaper that she was happy.
“To me, it was a response for a positive outlook for change . . . . It just opens the door for a new conversation, and that's what I was hoping for from the beginning,” said Webb. “It opens the door for change, and I think that’s definitely the first step.”
Caught!
It’s been 22 years since five American sisters were brutally slain while serving in a missionary in Liberia. Now, it looks like their murderer(s) may finally be brought to justice.
The Daily Beast reported that Belgian authorities last week arrested Martina Johnson, one of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor’s alleged female assassins.
She’s believed to be the one responsible for the deaths of five sisters from the St. Louis order of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ. The victims were Srs. Barbara Muttra, Mary Joel Kolmer, Shirley Kolmer, Agnes Mueller and Kathleen McGuire.
Johnson is believed to have been one of Taylor’s front-line commanders during his violent Operation Octopus reign of terror in Liberia’s bloody civil wars. She faces trial for war crimes, which will include charges for the sisters’ deaths.
Preying on priests, nuns
What a world, huh?
An Italian man and a French woman are being accused of robbing retired priests and nuns in southern France.
According to The Local, a Paris-based website that reports French news in English, the couple used a directory to find the home addresses of clergy members in the Var department (located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Provence)..
These thieves were clever. The guy would pretend that he wanted to make a donation, and when the victims would open their wallets to receive it, he robbed them. Authorities believe the dastardly duo has robbed at least 10 people that way.
The couple is now in custody and awaiting charges of gang robbery.
Tales from the jungle
Sr. Karen Schneider could probably write a book about her work in faraway jungles among snakes and malaria victims. But for now the physician is sharing those stories with folks like the students and faculty at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa.
Schneider, a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy and an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, appeared there during a series of events celebrating the school’s establishment 90 years ago by the Religious Sisters of Mercy.
Schneider’s Mercy Medical Mission ministry provides care and surgeries for children in Peru, Guyana, Haiti and other developing countries. She returned from Nigeria in August – in eight days she performed surgeries on 66 children with hernias – and will go back to Kenya this fall, according to the TimesLeader.com in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
At the end of one of her talks with the college students, she asked: “My question to you is, ‘How are you going to make a difference this year?’”
Good question.
Zapped!
The Monitor newspaper in McAllen, Texas, this week caught up with Sr. Carolyn Kosub of San Antonio.
Kosub and Srs. Emily Jocson and Fatima Santiago, members of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, recently received the Catholic Extension’s 2014 Lumen Christi Award for their work in some of the poorest regions of the world.
Kosub told the reporter that this not the life she thought she would lead. But one day, as a little girl in school, she watched an 8mm film on missionaries working in Central America. And she was hooked.
“Never in my life had I dreamt of becoming a nun,” she said. “I was zapped during that movie, the Lord really hit me; this is what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
Yes, mysterious ways.
[Lisa Gutierrez is a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., who scans the non-NCR news every week for interesting pieces about sisters. She can be reached at lisa11gutierrez@gmail.com.]