Sr. Louise DC comments on Vatican report

Sr. Louise Gallahue, DC comments on Vatican report – Excerpts from what was undoubtedly a lengthier interview as reported in a Crux article featuring comments by a variety of leaders of communities of women.

Sister Louise Gallahue, head of the Daughters of Charity Province of St. Louise, which includes about 500 sisters throughout the United States, told Crux she imagines her communities will use the document as “a reflection tool,” but said many of the issues included in the report — declining vocations, aging sisters, diminishing financial resources — would have been addressed by sisters anyway.

“We have internal mechanisms — assemblies, provincial meetings, general meetings — in where we would do that,” she said, calling the visitation, begun in 2008 under Pope Benedict XVI, “a long and tedious process.”

If the report is simply encouraging communities to engage in self-reflection, “It doesn’t seem to have warranted the amount of work and resources that went into this,” she said.

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“I don’t think we’ll totally move forward until the LCWR issue is resolved,” Sister Gallahue said. “This is a dialogical report, and in that sense it will help. But I don’t think it’s an end point in the relationship between women religious in the United States with the hierarchical Church as a whole.”