Vatican seeks to clarify review of US sisters

VATICAN CITY— The Vatican defended its review of U.S. women's religious orders on Tuesday amid criticism from the sisters that the process is secretive and amounts to a crackdown.

The Vatican ordered up the review in December, saying it wanted to study the quality of life of the 59,000 members in more than 400 Catholic women's religious institutes amid a steep decline in their numbers.

But the sisters have both publicly and privately raised questions about the true aims of the study and whether it wasn't really an investigation into whether they have strayed too far from church teaching.

Cardinal Franc Rode, who heads the Vatican office in charge of the review, said Tuesday the apostolic visitation was no crackdown but instead aimed at increasing the numbers of new sisters, and assuring them a better future.

At the same time, though, he said the questions U.S. sisters were being asked about their lives will provide a "realistic and graced opportunity for personal and community introspection."

"To date, I am encouraged by the efforts to identify the signs of hope, as well as concerns, within religious congregations in the United States, which are also likely to have implications elsewhere in the world," he said in a statement.

He added that at least some of the data gathered during the review will be publicized. The sisters have denounced what they say is a lack of transparency in the process and their inability to dispute the findings before the final conclusions are made.

The study, expected to be completed by 2011, is limited to women's religious communities doing work in the church and society, and it excludes cloistered and contemplative nuns.

The Vatican study was ordered up after four decades of declining numbers of U.S. sisters: In 1965, they numbered 173,865; by 2000 there were only 79,876, according to Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. The average age of a member of a women's religious community was between 65 and 70 in 1999.

At the same time, conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching. Some have taken provocative stands, advocating for female priests or challenging church teaching against abortion rights or gay marriage.