Latin American sisters rethink mission, community life

Published: 2007-05-25

APARECIDA, Brazil (CNS) -- Changes in vocations and in the needs of people in Latin America and the Caribbean are forcing women religious to rethink their mission and community life. Throughout the region, sisters are engaged in traditional work, such as health care and education, but in new ways. Increasingly they also seek "the frontiers, the places where human dignity faces the greatest threats," said Sister Maria de los Dolores Palencia of Mexico, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Lyon and vice president of the Latin American Confederation of Religious. "We want to be newly attentive to the signs of the times and to needs," she told reporters during the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, in which she is participating. Those pastoral frontiers include work among people with AIDS, indigenous people and those descended from African slaves, street children and people with addictions, she said. The need far exceeds the number of sisters. While 43 percent of the world's Catholics live in Latin America, the region is home to just 17 percent of the church's women religious.

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