Nuns’ treatment criticized
Vatican denounces nuns’ working for cardinals and bishops at next to no pay.
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican magazine has denounced how nuns are often treated like indentured servants by cardinals and bishops, for whom they cook and clean for next to no pay.
The March edition of “Women Church World,” the monthly women’s magazine of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, hit newsstands Thursday. Its expose on the underpaid labor and unappreciated intellect of religious sisters confirmed that the magazine is increasingly becoming the imprint of the Catholic Church’s #MeToo movement.
“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 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,” reads lead articles.
While such servitude is common knowledge, it is remarkable that a Vatican publication would dare put such words to paper and publicly denounce how the church systematically exploits its own nuns.
But that pluck has begun to define “Women Church World,” which launched six years ago as a monthly insert and is now a standalone magazine distributed for free online and alongside the printed newspaper. one of the
“Until now, no one has had the courage to denounce these things,” the magazine’s editor, Lucetta Scaraffia, told The Associated Press. “We try to give a voice to those who don’t have the courage to say these words” publicly.
“Inside the church, women are exploited,” she said in a recent interview.
While Pope Francis has told Scaraffia he appreciates and reads the magazine, it is by no means beloved within the deeply patriarchal Vatican system.