This week’s round-up of mainstream news coverage of women religious takes us back to 1986 when a group of sisters armed with rosaries and pictures of the Blessed Mother faced down evil in the Philippines.
Guess who won?
A sticky situation
Even oil companies can't escape the gaze of the biggest regulator of them all.
That’s how the Houston Chronicle revealed last week that Sr. Nora Nash and a group of Roman Catholic nuns in Philadelphia are working behind the scenes to pressure Chevron Corp. and other oil companies to reveal hydraulic fracturing data.
The sisters believe that the information could explain a number of health concerns in several Texas and Pennsylvania communities.
Last week, the newspaper reports, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia filed their fourth demand in as many years that Chevron release reports on the quality and amount of fresh and recycled water used for shale drilling, groundwater quality checks after drilling, and other issues.
The order’s recommendations for the company will be put to a shareholder vote at Chevron’s annual meeting in late May in Midland, Texas.
For three years in a row, the sisters have been the primary filers of resolutions related to Chevron’s hydraulic fracturing. Sr. Nash believes their efforts are gaining traction with investors.
“We have to keep filing and letting people know that, maybe fracking is good for the economy and jobs, but we need to know how it will affect the health of communities,” she said.
She’d do it all again
Sr. Evangelina Canag jokes that, at age 73, she’s reached a “Biblical age.”
If that’s true, then epic is the only word to describe everything that the former provincial superior of the Daughters of Saint Paul has accomplished.
Her life of “peace and quiet bravery” is detailed in an extensive April profile by the Business Mirror in the Philippines.
Raised in Leon, Iloilo, Philippines, she joined the congregation when she was 18 and felt “at home” instantly. She was provincial superior of the Daughters of Saint Paul in the region covering the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea three times.
She held that post in February 1986 when the country erupted in turmoil over charges that the national election had been rigged in favor of President Ferdinand Marcos.
The late Cardinal Jaime Sin, known as a champion of the poor in the Philippines, called on lay and religious alike to take to the streets and support the people’s candidates, including military officers who had defected from the Marcos regime.
Sr. Evangelina asked her colleagues to answer the Cardinal’s call, warning the sisters that the move would be dangerous. She led them to Edsa armed with rosaries, crucifixes and images of the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ.
“They stood in front of tanks, and only God knew how they trembled,” the story details. “The multitude who felt shielded by their presence appealed to them not to leave at any time.”
The sisters stayed and were later hailed for helping to limit bloodshed during the strife that saw Marcos ousted and Corazon C. Aquino set in place to head the restored democracy.
Today, Sr. Evangelina remains busy leading retreats for young people, visiting jail inmates and ministering to poor families who make their homes in the cemetery.
She’s also participating in the distribution of 75,000 copies of the Bible to 75,000 families across the country, a highlight of the celebration of the congregation’s 75th year in the country.
She’s still running ...
Why does this story make us think of the Energizer bunny?
Though Sr. Augustine is 71, she has no intention of retiring from the annual Dorchester Lions Club fun run, reports This is the Westcountry.co.uk, which covers southern and western England. (No other name is given; maybe everyone knows her there!)
Sr. Augustine, a member of the Order of Les Filles De La Croix in Woodlane, has participated for three decades.
This year she completed the 1.2-kilometer course and raised more than $1,800. She gave nearly $600 of it to the Falmouth Support Group for Cornwall Hospice Care, among other charities.
“I just love it,” she said, although “I do walk because I cannot really run.”
And she’s still singing
Remember how Sr. Cristina Scuccia became a global phenom in March when she sang Alicia Keys’ “No One” on the Italian version of “The Voice”?
We feel sorry for every singer who must compete now against the Sicilian sister because clearly she has God – and the judges – on her side.
The 25-year-old sister scored another win on the show this week, besting fellow contestant Luna Palumbo in a sing-off of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
How hard it must have been for Palumbo to watch the judges jump to their feet when Sr. Scuccia opened her mouth.
Noting that sister pointed heavenward when she sang the phrase “Daddy dear,” The Belfast Telegraph wondered if it was a “reference to a more heavenly Father?”
During the feedback, Italian singer-songwriter Noemi, one of the judges, said she appreciated how God has been brought into the competition through sister’s presence.
“I am a believer and I think that having brought God in here, it's extraordinary, because nowadays we do miss the spirituality,” said Noemi.
‘You don’t ever retire’
The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania, recently took an in-depth look at issues facing the aging population of women religious in the Diocese of Scranton.
Of the approximately 445 sisters from about 14 orders in the area, the median age of those in active ministry is 68, according to the diocese’s statistics.
Of those sisters in retirement or semi-retirement, the median age is 83.
As development director for the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Sr. Ann Monica Bubser spends much of her days finding the money to care for the elderly and infirm sisters living at Our Lady of Peace Residence assisted living facility in Scranton.
Keeping the public interested and engaged with all the work the order does do is vital to her efforts, she said.
“My job is to maintain communications we have with our public – the connections – and see if there is a way people want to walk with us,” she said. “I try to raise money for the sisters, our ministries and their health care.
It’s difficult for women whose lives have been built around ministry to use the word ‘retirement,’ she said. “You don’t ever retire from being a religious sister."
‘A Joyful Noise’
Here it is, some 700 years later, and a German sister by the name of Hildegard of Bingen is still making music, thanks to composer Christopher Theofanidis.
The Daily Telegram in Adrian, Michigan, tells how the composer was enchanted the first time he heard the music of the 12th-century nun a few years ago. “It has all the things you want for the spirit,” he told the paper.
When he found out all that she had accomplished in her life – she was a Benedictine abbess, artist, writer, composer and healer among other things – he felt even more inspired by this “Renaissance woman.”
In 2000 he wrote “Rainbow Body,” an orchestral piece based on one of her chants that has become one of the most-performed new orchestral works of the last decade.
His new work, “Virtue,” was performed by the Adrian Symphony Orchestra last weekend. It’s based on her musical liturgical drama, “Ordo Virtutum,” which some consider the oldest surviving morality play.
Theofanidis said his work features a “a boxing match” between the Soul and the Devil.
“Hildegard says ‘virtue that is not tested is not virtue.’ That’s a pretty serious thought,” he said. “And it’s an urgent question underlying the whole ‘Ordo’ ... It gets at some of those slippery-slope questions: What does it mean to be virtuous?”
A slippery slope, indeed.
[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.]