Abstract
The writing analyzes trends in the life and ministry of women in Latin America. It provides a quantitative sketch identifying religious sisters’ trends from 1970 to 2017 and compares them both with other regions and with Latin American priests. It exams three patterns, all of them concluding with declining numbers at the beginning of the 2000s.The analysis is grounded on a database that was built using the Statistical Yearbook of the Church. The article also examines the social space women religious have occupied in the Latin American countries over time; the construction of their social and ecclesial identity; and their relationship with Catholic consecrated men. Finally, it addresses their current challenges deepening in three issues that account for their crisis: first, the persistent clerical culture that permeates the Church’s dynamics; second, the disputes stirred up around decisions on their works and expressions of the past but not of their present; and third, the building of their present identity through the complex process of finding inspiration in the confrontation of their foundational sources with present pastoral theological approaches, as those framed within feminist theologies. Unearthing clues to better understanding the Latin American sisters’ crisis is a thread that runs throughout the analysis.
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Notes
From the beginning of the colonial period from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, 164 convents were founded in Latin America as indicated by Fray Ángel Martínez Cuesta. See Martínez Cuesta, Ángel O. R. A. “Las Monjas en la América Colonial 1530–1824,” Thesaurus, t. L, Centro Virtual Cervantes, 1995, pp. 622–626. (quoted in Chavez Vargas 2019: 244).
The transition towards the nineteenth century educational congregations is part of the Catholic Church struggle against the prevailing secularism at that time. Several measures to restore Catholicism were developed in Europe and in the rest of the nations, especially in Latin America. Priority was given to clergy discipline and formation; confraternities and other lay associations were encouraged as a way of rebuilding the inter-church network (Folquer, 2012). The foundation of numerous RCs was one of the most relevant effects of the policy designed from Rome in its effort to strengthen the Church and evangelize the population.
In France alone, around 400 new women RCs were founded the nineteenth century (Schatz, 1992: 48). Spain and Italy also strongly contributed with new institutes of consecrated life.
The daughters of Charity founded by saint Vincent de Paul in 1655 are the first to develop apostolic work outside the cloister. However, they were not really involved in Latin America until the independence.
Since early nineteenth century the share of cloistered nuns in the overall figures of vowed consecrated life declined. However, figures have been pretty stable over the last decades. Nuns in monasteries represented in 2016 about 13% of vowed women in Central America, and about 7% in South America (Greenwood and Gautier 2018).
The Second General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops was convened by Pope Paul VI in 1968, in Medellin, Colombia. The Conference established the importance of the Church’s addressing contemporary socioeconomic realities, endorsed new pastoral practices, and marked the emergence of the new, distinctly Latin American “theology of liberation.” The Conference shifted the Catholic Church’s emphasis towards the poor majority.
This hypothesis is supported in a pioneering study undertaken by the Latin American Conference of Religious people (CLAR), led by historian Ana María Bidegain (CLAR 2003). The study reconstructed the path of WRL from 1959 to 1999 using a participatory research method. She collected testimonies of women religious from 160 WRCs present in various Latin American countries. Many of these WRCs at the time of the CLAR’s study had sisters living among the poor. They tended to have a very positive assessment of the experience.
Final Document of the V General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (Aparecida Document), 2007.
The figures we present throughout the writing account for net changes over given periods. It needs to be acknowledged that people leave RCs very frequently (after short or long periods of membership), giving the flows a dynamic that net numbers overlook.
Costa Rica and Puerto Rico follow also this pattern, not so neatly as Argentina and Uruguay. Puerto Rico, a US protectorate, had 1,641 sisters in 1970, and has moderately, but consistently been decreasing numbers over the decades to end up with about 800 in present times. Costa Rica had 1503 sisters in 1970, and lost almost half of them by 1980; since then, numbers remained pretty stable.
Chile follows this second pattern. However, it is interesting to point out the 1990’s figures indicating an important increase after a drop-off in the 1980s; a decade latter -in the 2000s- figures go back to the numbers shown in 1970 and 1980. The Statistical Yearbook of the Church indicate that numbers jumped up in 1989, and went back to the 1980’s numbers a few years later. We believe that this might indicate a mistake in the reporting (which is not unusual to find in this book), rather than a real increase. However, in-depth studies need to be undertaken to understand fluctuations over time, since it might indicate substantive changes that need to be understood.
See Pew Research Center, Religion in Latin America, November 2014.
https://www.pewforum.org/2014/11/13/religion-in-latin-america/
Most Secular institutes and associations of the faithful were founded in the twentieth century. Their consecrated members are lay people bounded by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, within a community life. They are dedicated to works of apostolate indicated by the institute itself. In canonical terms they do not constitute institutes of religious life.
In Brazil, from the mid-1990s to 2012, the number of parishes rose from 7,786 to 10,720; an increase of almost 40% in 16 years (Steil and Toniol 2013, 233).
In Argentina, the number of parishes, chapels, and sanctuaries went from 4,636 places of worship in 1961 to 13,708 in 2019. They tripled (Suárez and Olszanowski 2021).
Perfectae Caritatis recommendations to face RC renewal are: a return to the Gospel; a return to the foundational charism; greater participation of the congregations to the life of the Church; openness to the "signs of the times"; spiritual renewal; and lifestyles adaptation to the needs of the apostolate, the cultural context, and the economic and social circumstances (Quiñones 1999). For the full Document, see https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651028_perfectae-caritatis_en.html
Aggiornamento is an Italian word. It is understood as adaptation to the changed conditions of the contemporary world.
As a matter of fact, RCs tend to give a central role to the person they recognize as their founder. The life of RCs to a greater or lesser extent revolves around what they consider to be the exemplary life of their founder, his or her “charism” and vision. Founders are credited with having undergone experiences of radical transformation, which can usually be pinpointed to an event or series of events; these are perceived and symbolically constructed as an abrupt change in their identity and as a timeless moment in which a vision or dream is received (Cada et al., 1979). In order to leave no doubt about the exemplarity of the founder’s life, it is usually processed that he/she be declared a “saint” by the ecclesial hierarchy. Achieving this recognition, the highest within the Catholic Church, is read as a sign of legitimacy for the congregation and its works (schools, asylums, etc.) inspired by “such an exemplary” person (Suárez 2020a).
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This writing is funded by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (PICTO UCA 2017–035) and Association for the Sociology of Religion (J. Fichter Research Grant).
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Suárez, A.L., Lecaros, V. Religious Sisters in Latin America. Identity, Challenges, and Perspectives. Int J Lat Am Relig 5, 330–354 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-021-00148-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-021-00148-0