nuns

"Subversive Habits" Tells Overlooked Story of Black Catholic Nuns

Shannen Dee Williams offers a history of Black nuns at a time when the American church is grappling with its history of discrimination and exclusion. 

The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings

America’s nuns are beginning to confront their ties to slavery, but it’s still a long road to repentance.

How Nuns Have Shaped the Course of Art History

“We think of these nuns as imprisoned, but it was a very enriching world for them,” Linda Falcone told Artsy. 

Segregated Sisterhoods and the Mercurial Politics of Racial Truth-Telling

by Shannen Dee Williams

African-American Catholics were routinely denied admission to sisterhoods and congregations.

The Pope and the Nuns

by Margaret McGuinness

Image via Flickr.As soon as it was determined that the smoke was indeed white, thousands of Facebook posts, tweets, and texts began to document reactions to the election of Pope Francis. Initial cryptic comments included: “This is a surprise”; “Jesuit pope”; “Love him already”; and some cautious remarks about his aversion to liberation theology, especially as practiced by Latin American priests and nuns. Since that day, the election and recent installation of Pope Francis to the throne of Peter has continued to generate articles, commentaries, and conversations on social media sites expressing opinions about the first Latin American pontiff, and suggesting an agenda that would, in their opinion, revitalize an ancient church that is struggling to remain vibrant in the twenty-first century.

Ireland apologizes to women of Catholic laundries

DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland ignored the mistreatment of thousands of women who were incarcerated within Catholic nun-operated laundries and must pay the survivors compensation, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Tuesday in an emotional state apology for the decades of abuses in the so-called Magdalene Laundries."By any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland, distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy," Kenny said, as dozens of former Magdalenes watched tearfully from parliament's public gallery overhead.Kenny told lawmakers his government has appointed a senior judge to recommend an aid program for the approximately 1,000 women still living from the residential workhouses, the last of which closed in 1996. He also pledged government funding for the erection of a national memorial "to remind us all of this dark part of our history."...