“Jesus wept”: The Overlooked Stories of Nuns Abused by Priests
Sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has been an ongoing international scandal, but some of the most unheard victims are the nuns who have been assaulted by priests for decades.
Meghan Kane, The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
The past two decades have been extremely tumultuous for the Catholic Church. Reports of priests and bishops sexually abusing children have sprung up from around the world in the thousands, cases spanning from the 1940s to today. I am no stranger to these reports, being from Boston. Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston, infamously covered up cases of abuse within the diocese and moved accused priests around to different parishes, putting countless children in danger. Pope Francis has been more active than his predecessors on handling the issue, holding a summit in February 2019 solely dedicated to the matter and issuing laws mandating that priests and nuns report abuse. The world is primarily focused on the cases involving children, and rightfully so, but increasing numbers of nuns are coming out and sharing their stories of abuse.
The Vatican is essentially a boys club, with the patriarchal structure still very much intact. Donne Chiesa Mondo, a supplement of the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano, was the first Vatican publication to write about the abuse of nuns in February, the same month that the Pope held his sexual abuse summit. Lucetta Scaraffia, editor of Donne Chiesa Mondo, blames the ongoing abuse of nuns on that very patriarchal structure. She argues that the nuns feel guilty for “tempting” a holy man into sinning, as they are taught that they are always the ones at fault, not the men. The Catholic Church is an archaic institution, going back hundreds of years. Unsurprisingly, their social structure has not caught up to modern standards of gender equality; male supremacy is virtually ingrained in their culture. However, this does not excuse the slow action of the Vatican on encouraging and enforcing the equal opportunity and treatment of men and women within the Church. Scaraffia says that the priesthood, going as high as the Vatican ministries, exploits the nuns as housekeepers. They do all of the cleaning and cook all of the food every day without fixed hours or pay. Unlike the men, there is no chance of advancement. According to Christopher Livesay of PBS, some people have compared this treatment of the nuns to slavery.
Doris Wagner, a former nun from Germany, was repeatedly raped by the same priest five years after arriving in Rome in 2003. Wagner says that according to her congregation, the men’s attraction to the nuns is the fault of the nuns. When Wagner told her female superior about the rape, she became furious with her and told Wagner that she is dangerous to him and to stay away. The misogyny within the Church is so deep-rooted that even the women harbor the sexist sentiment within themselves. Before Pope Francis’ February summit, sanctioning priests who abuse nuns was up to local church leaders. In 2018, a Vatican official told AP News that nuns “have to be encouraged to speak up when they are molested,” and that “bishops have to be encouraged to take them seriously, and make sure the priests are punished if guilty.” However, being taken seriously is extremely difficult for nuns who speak up about abuse. Karlijn Demasure, one of the Church’s leading experts on clergy abuse, argues that the clergymen often take the “she wanted it” route when confronted with an accusation. In addition, the notion that women are always the instigators is so ingrained in Church culture that it is hard to get rid of.
Pope Francis’ new abuse reporting law could potentially impact abuse cases from years ago, as the reporting requirement is supposedly “procedural and not criminal in nature”, meaning that nuns and priests are required to report old cases and are now entitled to whistleblower protections for coming forward. Additionally, new regulations protect those who explicitly report “prejudice, retaliation, or discrimination”. This law was announced at Francis’ summit in February, so it seems as though the Vatican is making promising steps towards absolving the issue. However, until the Vatican begins to make steps on explicitly protecting and promoting the equality of women within the Church, the issue of nun abuse will continue. The belief that women are inferior temptresses is spread throughout the Vatican and the rest of the Church, and no matter how many laws Francis passes regarding the abuse, it will perpetuate because the priesthood still holds misogynistic attitudes that lead them to believe that they can take advantage of women.
