Church treats nuns like servants: Vatican magazine

A VATICAN magazine has denounced the treatment of nuns as indentured servants by cardinals and bishops.

The March edition of Women, Church, World, the monthly women’s magazine of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, highlighted that nuns cook and clean for senior Catho- lic clergy for next to no pay. The exposé on the underpaid labour and unappreciated intellect of religious sisters confirmed that the magazine is increasingly becoming the imprint of the Catholic Church’s #MeToo movement.

One lead article said of the nuns: “Some of them serve in the homes of bishops or cardinals, others work in the kitchens of Church institutions or teach. Some of them, serving the Pontiff: Pope Francis men of the Church, get up in the morning to make breakfast, and go to sleep after dinner is served, the house cleaned and the laundry washed and ironed.”

A nun, identified only as Sister Marie, describes how sisters serve clergy but “are rarely invited to sit at the tables they serve”.

While such servitude is common knowledge, it is remarkable that an official Vatican publication would dare put such words to paper and publicly denounce how the Church systematically exploits its own nuns.

Women, Church, World began six years ago as a monthly insert in L’Osservatore Romano and is now a stand-alone magazine distributed for free online and alongside the printed newspaper.

Its editor, Lucetta Scaraffia, said: “We try to give a voice to those who don’t have the courage to say these words.”