Victims of Catholic nuns rely on each other after being overlooked in the clergy sex abuse crisis

Gabrielle Longhi

By TIFFANY STANLEY

On Wednesdays, the support group meets over Zoom. The members talk about their lives, their religious families and their old parochial schools. But mostly, they are there to talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Catholic nuns.

The topic deserves more attention, they say. The sexual abuse of children by Catholic sisters and nuns has been overshadowed by far more common reports of male clergy abuse. Women in religious orders have also been abuse victims — but they have been perpetrators too.

“We’ve heard so much about priests who abuse and so little about nuns who abuse that it’s time to restore the balance,” said the group’s founder, Mary Dispenza, herself a former nun, in a speech to abuse survivors last year.

Dispenza, who endured abuse from both a childhood priest and a nun in her former order, started the online support group five years ago with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. More victims had been contacting her in the wake of #MeToo, as they reassessed past sexual abuse. She has since seen a growing awareness of abusive nuns at former Catholic orphanages and Native American boarding schools.

“The general public would rather not consider the fact that religious women rape, molest and torture children,” Dispenza told The Associated Press. Women are seen as nurturers and caregivers, an assumption only heightened with the “spiritual halo” of religious women.

“It’s something most of us don’t want to entertain or really believe,” she said.

NEW LAW OFFERS CHANCE FOR JUSTICE

Before she found the support group and its 10 or so members, Gabrielle Longhi had spent years looking for someone with a story like hers, once posting in the comments of SNAP’s website: “I never hear about abuse by nuns.”

Now 66 and living in Los Angeles, Longhi was a sophomore at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland, when she alleges a teacher, who was then a Catholic sister with the Society of the Sacred Heart, sexually abused her in an office.

Unlike most child sexual abuse victims, she spoke up right away. She told other teachers, her sister and friends that Sister Margaret Daley had tried to sexually force herself on Longhi. Neither her parents nor the police were notified.

“She also kind of retreated after that. She became more closed down,” said her sister, Carol O’Leary, who was then a student at Stone Ridge’s middle school. The sisters say they were soon asked to leave Stone Ridge.

Longhi always wondered if there were other victims. Daley, her alleged abuser, left the order in 1980 and died in 2015.

Last year, Longhi learned from another support group member that Maryland was removing its civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims. After the new law went into effect, Longhi sued her former school and the religious order.

Stone Ridge, which has educated Kennedys and the daughters of other Washington luminaries, sent a letter to its community about the allegations last fall. The school declined to comment further on active litigation.

The Society of the Sacred Heart declined to discuss the allegations, but issued a statement saying the order and its schools have implemented robust child protection policies. “We are deeply saddened,” the statement read. “Our prayers go out to all involved in this matter, and to all survivors of sexual abuse.”

An anticipated constitutional challenge to Maryland’s law is pending, but the policy change “makes all the difference in the world,” Longhi said. “Before you have no case and now you do.”

‘IT WAS ABUSE. I INTERPRETED IT AS LOVE.’

Paige Eppenstein Anderson is still hoping for her day in court. Like many group members, it took her decades to see that what happened to her was abuse, and once she did in 2020 at age 40, the statute of limitations had run out on her claim in her home state of Pennsylvania.

“It was abuse. I interpreted it as love,” she said of the sexual relationship she had as a student with a Catholic school teacher, who later joined a religious order.

As a teenager, she spent much of her free time with her teacher. Their bond was so noticeable that a yearbook entry from a friend called her the woman’s “companion.”

“It was very confusing to me,” Eppenstein Anderson said.

Anne Gleeson was also nearly 40 and in therapy before she understood that she was sexually abused for years, starting at age 13, by a nun who was 24 years her senior. She received a settlement from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 2004.

“The nun brainwashed me into thinking we were head over heels in love,” she said. “God’s love, that’s why no one else could know about it — it was so special.”

A longtime SNAP activist in St. Louis, Gleeson had felt that the advocacy group’s name — which only mentioned those abused by priests — neglected victims like her.

The nun abuse group brought “a great sense of relief,” she said.

LITTLE TRACKING OF ABUSIVE NUNS

Few dioceses or religious orders publicly list abusive nuns — a fact group members want to change. The advocacy group Bishop Accountability lists 172 Catholic sisters who have been accused of sex abuse.

“I feel that it’s vastly underreported,” said Marya Dantzer, a group member who settled her nun abuse case in Michigan in 1996.

Dantzer noted that nuns, especially as teachers, arguably spend more time with young people than priests.

For years, Dispenza and others have been asking without success for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — which represents two-thirds of U.S. Catholic sisters — to allow nun abuse survivors to speak at their annual meeting.

“We agree with SNAP that women religious need to keep working for the healing of victims and the prevention of further abuse and that hearing directly from survivors is essential,” said Sister Annmarie Sanders, LCWR spokesperson, in an email.

Sanders said the LCWR meeting was not “the proper venue for discussion on this issue.” Victims should instead contact their abuser’s religious order.

Each of the more than 400 U.S. religious institutes for women is relatively autonomous.

In a 2019 speech about Catholic sex abuse, LCWR’s then-president Sharlet Wagner acknowledged “that in some instances, our own sisters have been perpetrators of the abuse.”

That speech followed an apology for abuse from an international organization of Catholic sisters, as well as Pope Francis’ creation of an abuse reporting system, which includes nuns.

The support group members would like the church to accept more responsibility, and for all religious orders to expel known abusers from their ranks.

In the meantime, the support group continues to welcome new members, even as others move on. It remains mostly women, many over age 60.

Dispenza recently stepped back from facilitating the group, with Dantzer taking over as leader.

After seeing a growing need, Dispenza opened a second group in 2022 that includes international victims of nun abuse, and she will focus her efforts there.

Members of the international cohort are contemplating the launch of nun abuse support groups in Peru and the Balkans. They have put their contact information on the SNAP website, there for anyone looking for stories like their own.

Complete Article HERE!

Lesbian nuns tell their stories in new book that reflects changing times

“Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious” is out new this year from New Ways Ministry press.

By

I must know at least 1,000 nuns. (Though they are actually called “women religious” or “sisters.”) They taught me. I studied with them. We lived in the seminary with them. I’ve said Mass for several women congregations. We ministered together. I attended retreats given by them. They have been spiritual directors. I’ve written about them.

Yet, not once have I said to myself, “This nun is a lesbian.” And I think it’s because of my respect and reverence for them.

After reading two ground-breaking books about lesbian nuns, though, I think it’s the opposite. I had internalized the historic shame for same-sex feelings. Or, it simply does not matter.

The recently released “Love Tenderly” tells the story of 23 sisters coming to grips with their sexual orientation in the context of religious life. The contemporary work reflects a different milieu than the first ground-breaking, sensational “Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence,” published in 1985, which told 47 nuns’ stories. Jarring, it became an international hit because the words “lesbian” and “nun” had never been uttered in the same sentence in such a public way before. It also gave the curious a peek behind the convent walls that was not always flattering.

“Love Tenderly” oozes with tolerance and sensitivity, not only by the sisters telling their sometimes painful coming-out stories, but also of more accepting religious leadership in their communities.

Religious life in the U.S. has changed dramatically over the last 36 years.

'Lesbian Nuns'
“Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence” was originally published in 1985 and re-issued in 2013.

Years ago, young women entering Catholic orders were warned about “particular friendships,” which could be code for lesbians, and reminded to be friends with all sisters. But many women did bond and some crossed the line into sexual intimacy. When discovered, some were asked to leave the community or go for counseling or they were shamed.

Sister Kathleen Tuite — at 56, one of the youngest in the Dominican Sisters’ Caldwell order — is a product of the new formation. Entering the order at 25, she did her novitiate — or first period of formation — at a collaborative Dominican center in St. Louis with 10 other Dominican novices from all over the country. Unlike the closed environment in Caldwell, her novitiate was more expansive and open, exposing her to newer currents among young religious aspirants. A Dominican sister suggested I speak with her because she has her finger on the pulse of contemporary religious life.

“It was a wonderful experience with people on the same journey,” said Tuite, who later taught at St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City.

Throughout the next two decades, she also attended programs as part of Giving Voice, a program for anywhere between 50 and 80 young sisters, also from all over the country, so they would have support and encouragement to persevere in religious life. They also embodied a new understanding of church “where all God’s people live in pure love, social justice and truth,” she said.

These kinds of insights, she said, enabled sisters identifying as same-sex to remain in religious life, embracing the vow of celibacy with dignity and not shame.

The two anthologies recount the stories of young women who felt their call to enter the convent as sacred. Some described their feelings of attraction to girls since they were young, but not one said she entered because she wanted to fall in love with another nun. Though many described how their coming out was made safe in the confines of the convent in the company of other women, most felt lonely at first until they could confide in other sisters. Many stayed, some left and some returned.

“Sister Petra,” a pseudonym for a former congregational leader locally told me that “sex was never ever discussed” when she entered the convent. The main emphasis was “how to live a celibate life with women.”

She did become aware of “some people who did identify as lesbian and chose to leave.” It was not the lifestyle for them but “it was a safe space for exploration.”

She views the issue of same-sex relations as one of justice and adds that “inclusivity is always an issue” — not only in the matter of treating gays with dignity. Most religious communities of women have advocated for any people being treated unjustly in the church, especially women.

“Women are exiting the church like crazy and it has to come to grips with this exodus,” she said.

Tuite is now the vice president of Student Life at Caldwell University, owned by her religious order.

“My life is around women who have donated their lives as I have grown stronger in my religious life and allowed to develop the gifts I had,” she said.

She could see openly gay and transgender women disposed toward living celibate lives accepted in most religious orders today.

“Sister Petra” agreed, adding “if you have a vocation and feel called to serve.”

Religious communities of women continue to break new ground and lead the church by example.

Complete Article HERE!

I was a nun for 2 decades before leaving the convent to be with a woman.

— I stood up to the church for our right to marry.

Monica Hingston was a nun for over two decades.

By Gary Nunn

  • Monica Hingston became a nun at 21 but left the convent when she fell in love with another nun.
  • They moved to a seaside town to live as soulmates — but never got the chance to be spouses.
  • This is Hingston’s story, as told to Gary Nunn.

At 21, I walked down the aisle on my “wedding” day wearing a traditional white dress and a huge train. After I spoke my vows, I walked into a room next to the cathedral. Two women presented me with an austere black gown and asked me to remove my wedding dress. Then they hacked off my hair.

Those two women were nuns. My groom was an unlikely man — Jesus Christ himself.

In 1962, this was known as “the reception” into the convent, and I had just become a nun.

I was an unlikely nun

I’d been a chain-smoking teenager with a motorbike-riding boyfriend, but I came from a religious family. My cousin Cardinal George Pell became one of the most powerful Catholics and the pope’s treasurer.

My mother didn’t want me to join the convent at all; she thought I was limiting my options in life. My dad, meanwhile, thought it was an honor from God. He had a brother who was a priest.

But I admired the nuns who taught me: They were nonmaterialistic people. They were intelligent, caring, and compassionate women doing good without expecting anything in return. I saw that their lives had value and they aspired to be the best human beings they could be — by helping others.

But being a nun tested my rebellious streak. Once, my cousin observed me teaching girls how to empower themselves. He dismissively accused me of teaching them “nothing but fairy floss.” When I was discovered reading a banned philosophy book, a superior said, “Careful. You can read your way out of the church.”

Other times, I questioned why we’d have to follow strange instructions, like moving furniture just to demonstrate blind obedience.

After over 2 decades in the convent, I considered leaving the church for good

I took a yearlong sabbatical and hitchhiked around South America. I was later posted in Chile, where I, along with two American nuns, established a center for struggling Chilean women.

One of the other nuns was named Peg. She’d been a nun for 25 years, and I had reached my 21st. We shared a passion for empowering oppressed women. We’d talk for hours. I hated leaving her at the end of each day.

One day, she confessed: “I don’t want you to leave, but I’m afraid to ask you to stay.”

My entire life changed at that point. Every road had led me to her. I realized I was falling deeply in love, and she felt the same.

We wrote to the pope requesting to be released from our vows, and he swiftly approved

We moved to Torquay, Australia, to live happily as a lesbian couple. There, Peg and I connected on every level. We hugged five or six times a day. We shared our fears and hopes. I’d never known happiness like it.

We wanted to get married — not in a church; by this point, I was firmly an atheist, and Peg was more agnostic. But in 2003, the church instructed Catholic politicians to actively oppose laws recognizing gay unions, calling those seeking them “depraved.” My cousin Pell aggressively backed these sentiments.

I wrote him a private letter challenging his homophobia by describing my relationship with my beautiful Peg.

“It is a rare and precious gift. A partnership of sensitivity and selflessness, of warmth and humor, of wonder and beauty,” I wrote, adding: “It daily enriches me, it empowers me to work for the wellbeing of others.”

A friend persuaded me to make the letter public after Pell ignored me. I reluctantly agreed, hoping it’d help others.

The next day, a man called. He said he’d felt isolated as a gay Catholic and wept at my letter in a newspaper, which made him feel less alone. I was shocked and couldn’t wait to tell Peg. I was just so happy to know we’d made a difference.

I received almost 200 similar calls and emails.

Peg and I were soulmates, but we never achieved our dream of marrying

In 2011, Peg was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. She died three months later at 74. I was 70.

In her final letter to me, Peg wrote, “Owls symbolize intelligence, brilliance, perspective, intuition, quick wit, independence, wisdom, protection, mystery, and power. You are all of these, dearest Mon.”

Grief enveloped me. I stopped playing golf, listening to music, and dressing fancy — everything we loved together. I started living in a fog.

One morning, a year after her death, I heard crows attacking something in a small tree outside my house. I slowly raised my window blinds and froze in shock. It was an owl — a big, beautiful white barn owl with a heart-shaped face. It held my gaze for 15 minutes before flying away.

I finally felt the fog lift. I felt alive — and no longer alone.

Complete Article HERE!

Kicking the habit: two former nuns married in civil ceremony in Italy

Federica and Isabel fell in love while working at rehab center for drug addicts and renounced being nuns but say they have not lost their faith

By

 Italy earlier this year legalized civil unions, angering the Vatican.
Italy earlier this year legalized civil unions, angering the Vatican.

Federica and Isabel’s love story was not that unusual, apart from one detail.

The affair, which culminated in a civil union this week in the Italian town of Pinerolo, began “slowly” according to their friend, Franco Barbero. The two had a lot in common, having both decided to devote their lives to charitable work.

They fell in love working at a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts, but there was just one hitch.

Both were already married to the Catholic church.

Federica and Isabel were Franciscan nuns when they met and fell in love, and have both since renounced their vocation and spoken out against the church’s position against homosexuality.

“God wants people happy, to live the love in the light of the sun,” Isabel recently told La Stampa, the Italian daily newspaper. The two brides said that they have not lost their faith and would not otherwise have wanted to leave the church.

“We call upon our church to welcome all people who love each other,” added Federica, her new bride.

The courtship and civil union comes about one year after a Vatican official, Krzysztof Charamsa, publicly abandoned the church after announcing that he was gay and in love. Charamsa was sacked and defrocked after admitting he was in love with another man.

The two women were joined in a civil union in a ceremony behind closed doors in Pinerolo’s city hall, about 24 hours before they had planned. The ceremony was supposed to take place on Thursday, but the time was changed after the media were alerted to the story and the couple wanted to avoid a media frenzy.

Luca Salvai, the Five Star Movement mayor who performed the ceremony, told La Stampa: “We have guaranteed the right to privacy for this couple, who asked for discretion.”

He added that the couple were expected to remain in Pinerolo, which is near the city of Turin.

“Yesterday morning they arrived by themselves, scared by all the clamor, and after the ceremony they left by themselves in silence, one next to the other,” Salvai said.

It was the second same sex civil union ceremony performed in the town of Pinerolo since Italy passed legislation to legalise same-sex unions earlier this year. The couple are also due to participate in a religious service by their friend, Barbero, a former priest who was suspended because of his support of gay marriage.

“I can assure you that not all [of the other nuns] were against this. They have been criticised, but also understood by some sisters. Just as there are many good priests who do not condemn these kind of choices. I must add, for the record, that it is not the first time that I happen to marry two sisters,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

Lesbian Nuns and gay Priests: From The Late Late Show to Maynooth

By Páraic Kerrigan

A PhD Candidate in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University, suggests the recent Maynooth ‘scandal’ implies that some have not kept pace with changing attitudes to sexuality in wider Irish society.

Maynooth seminary

THE recent Maynooth ‘scandals’, to use the convenient media shorthand, seems to suggest that despite the major progressions surrounding LGBT rights in Ireland some attitudes remain relatively unchanged.

In particular, this remains the case for the more conservative pockets of Irish society and especially the Catholic Church.

Ireland and the Church has been subject to many sex scandals since the early 1990s but it appears that when it comes to members of our clergy and our convents being gay, (or straight for that matter) well, then all hats, or soutanes, are off.

We only have to look to an episode of The Late Late Show from a little over thirty years ago to see the moral panic that can be generated on the acknowledgement that priests and nuns can have a sexuality too.

On the release of their book, Breaking Silence: Lesbian Nuns on Convent Sexuality, Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan appeared on The Late Late Show to promote its release in Ireland.

Both Manahan and Curb were ex-nuns and lesbians who had risen to notoriety following the book’s release in the US.

Controversially, the publication contained within it interviews with women who entered convent life, only to later discover that they were lesbians.

Prior to its launch in Ireland, Nell McCafferty correctly predicted the book was ‘enough to create furore and a minor furore there will no doubt be’.

Immediately upon its release, a text acknowledging that nuns also have sexual inhibitions, and gay ones at that, was considered so heinous that the Irish customs authorities seized 1,500 copies on its arrival to the island.

It wasn’t just the customs authorities that were so scandalised. Middle Ireland wanted to have their say too.

In fact, they were so infuriated by both Curb and Manahan, that they mobilised themselves into a picket and protested outside of the Buswells Hotel on Molesworth Street, where the pair had been staying.

When The Late Late Show announced in the RTÉ Guide that same week that the ex-nuns would be making an appearance on that Saturday’s edition of the show, the telephone switchboards at RTÉ lit up with protest calls.

On the night of the broadcast itself, the shocked and appalled members of conservative Catholic Ireland held a vigil outside of the Montrose studios, where they erected a statue of the Virgin Mary, while being led by a priest through decades of the rosary as he was amplified from an ice-cream van on site.

Despite the furore caused during the week, the interview with the nuns ended up being not all that scandalous.

Despite getting one of the highest audience figures for any Irish TV show during the 1980s, the interview was fairly tame by Late Late standards.

Even Sr. Maura, an Irish nun from the Daughters of Sion who was on the panel that night, made the rather progressive comment reminding the Irish audience that the clergy don’t ‘leave their sexuality at the door’ when they enter religious life.

 

“Strange goings on” and “a quarrelsome” atmosphere led to Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s decision.

Perhaps it was this attitude that may have benefitted Archbishop Martin in his recent press statements on ‘the strange goings-ons’ at Maynooth.

Despite major changes to public attitudes since 1985 in wider Irish society, however, homosexuality is still clearly viewed as a problem by the church.

Looking at Late Late incident and the Maynooth story in tandem highlights that the church’s attitude to homosexuality has not changed but at least Ireland’s Catholic elite have not yet descended on St. Patrick’s seminary at Maynooth with an ice-cream van and a statue of the Blessed Virgin.

Complete Article HERE!