‘Sister Agnes was to go to Ghana in Africa!’ Catholic Nuns and Migration

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, women increasingly participated in the mission venture of the Catholic Church. Moving across national and continental boundaries for religious reasons, missionary nuns opened up spheres of religious service that had been gendered male in Catholic tradition and associated with clerical authority. Attempting to proselytize non-western women and children mostly in the capacity of teachers and nurses, they also managed to enter new work arenas. Still, it was only in the second half of the twentieth century and after major religious and political events (beginning decolonization, Vatican II) that western women’s congregations opened their institutions for those women they had come to convert and gradually started to redefine their vision of mission, committing themselves to an active concern with ethnic diversity and cross-cultural collaboration.

This chapter examines the relationship between feminism and migration through the example of an originally German congregation of missionary nuns, which created a network of branches across five continents already in the nineteenth century and nowadays operates in 46 countries worldwide. On the basis of the nuns’ mission in Papua New Guinea from 1899 to date, the study discusses women’s congregations as spaces for feminine self-assertion, collective action and social support. Moreover, it scrutinizes the uneven path of religious politics and practices in the cause of the twentieth century and addresses issues of mobility, exclusion/inclusion and empowerment.