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Training workshop held for those who will visit religious communities

ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- Members of religious orders who will visit selected religious congregations of women as part of an apostolic visitation are "well prepared and eager to hear the stories of the sisters they will visit," said the nun who is overseeing the Vatican-mandated study.

The visitors will experience "the rich living heritage and promise of religious life in the United States" through those they see, said Mother Mary Clare Millea, who is apostolic visitator for the study of 341 U.S. communities of women religious.

"I was profoundly moved by the participants' active engagement in the process, their collaboration with one another and their obvious dedication to religious life," said Mother Clare, who is superior general of her order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

She made the comments in a statement released by her office in Connecticut following an orientation workshop she conducted Feb. 26-28 in St. Louis.

Seventy-eight women and men religious who will be the on-site visitors were invited to attend the training session, facilitated by Cabrini Sister Joan McGlinchey, who is vicar for religious for the Chicago Archdiocese.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis, chairman-elect of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, and Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., celebrated Mass for workshop attendees and speakers.

Keynote speakers included Bishop Lori; Mercy Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate; and Sister Melanie Di Pietro, a Sister of Charity who is director of the Center for Religiously Affiliated Corporations and a professor at Seton Hall University Law School.

The on-site visits to a representative sample of religious congregations mark the start of the third phase of the apostolic visitation. The first series of visits are scheduled to take place between April 11 and June 4. A second series will be scheduled for this fall.

The apostolic visitation was initiated by Cardinal Franc Rode, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Announced Jan. 30, 2009, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, the apostolic visitation process was opened "in order to look into the quality of life" of U.S. congregations of women religious.

The study covers nearly all of the country's 67,000 sisters. Only those nuns who live in cloisters are exempt.

The first phase of the study, completed last July, involved a series of voluntary meetings, telephone conversations or written exchanges between Mother Clare and superiors general.

The second phase began in September 2009, when questionnaires were sent to the religious communities.

The three-part questionnaire sought information related to congregational membership, living arrangements, the ministries in which members participate, spiritual life, including the practice of prayer and the frequency of Mass attendance, and the promotion of vocations.

Once the study concludes in mid-2011, a confidential report will be sent to Cardinal Rode, but its findings will not be made public.