The Vatican's decree granting the merger of the Congregation of Jesus and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto) comes 416 years after Venerable Mary Ward first set out her vision for a new way of religious life for women.
I had never met anyone who had transferred institutes until God called me to transfer. I now realize how important accompaniment is through this journey of intense listening to God throughout this vocational process.
In popular imagination, we don't usually put "gift" and "elder adulthood" in the same sentence. I am convinced that there is a very special gift in this stage of life: the invitation to journey inward.
Eight Missionary Sisters of the Gospel, ages 79 to 98, live at Chêne de Mambré, a béguinage in Angers, France. Twenty-six residents ages 70 to 100, most of them laypeople, live there as well.
Founded in 1999 with Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry, this Vermont community strives to be earth conscious and demonstrate an appreciation and reverence of God's creations.
The path of this sociologist and addiction counselor, who is currently training as a spiritual companion of the Ignatian spiritual exercises, has been marked by the search for spiritual freedom and accompaniment to those who need to free themselves from their physical and emotional burdens and wounds.
This new stage is "inter" in the sense of honoring and integrating all members of the human community. And it is "individual" in that it requires women religious to remain themselves and let others do the same.
How do congregations cope with the changes and the decline in vocations? Sr. Dora Tupil shares her experience of the closure of houses and projects of her congregation, the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
