Unequal Partners: In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood 9780226697697

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Unequal Partners

Unequal Partners In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood

CASEY RITCHIE CLEVENGER

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2020 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-69741-3 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-69755-0 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-69769-7 (e-book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226697697.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Clevenger, Casey Ritchie, author. Title: Unequal partners : in search of transnational Catholic sisterhood / Casey Ritchie Clevenger. Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019044398 I ISBN 9780226697413 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226697550 (paperback) I ISBN 9780226697697 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur—History. | Monasticism and religious orders for women—History. Classification: LCC BX4485.3 .CS4 2020 | DDC 271/.97—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044398 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

ONE

/ Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 1 / Julie Is Our Ancestor: Unearthing the Roots of Transnationalism / 24

T WO

THREE

/ Like Night and Day: Sisters’ Personal and Communal Religious Practices in Two Places / 58 FOUR

/ Pathways to Religious Life for American and Congolese Women / 85 FIVE

SIX

/ A Life of Ministries / 118

/ Mission Is Everything: Sisters on the Frontiers of Ministry in Greater Boston / 145

/ Poverty, Development, and the Challenges of Catholic Sisterhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo / 171

SEVEN

CONCLUSION

/ Circling Back and Looking Forward / 192

Appendix: Research Methodology / 209 Acknowledgments / 225 Notes / 231 Bibliography / 257 Index / 267

ONE

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood

Sisters of Notre Dame, women with hearts as wide as the world, make known God’s goodness and love with and among people living in poverty, through a Gospel way of life, community and prayer. Continuing a strong educational tradition, we take our stand with people living in poverty, especially women and children, in the most abandoned places. Each of us commits her one and only life to work with others to create justice and peace for all. —mission statement of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

Sitting in the Congregational Mission Office of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Sr. Ellen made a call to electrical engineer Louis Casey. “I really have a problem [in] schools and hospitals in Africa,” Sr.  Ellen told him. As the recently appointed general treasurer of her religious order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Sister Ellen had just returned from a trip to Africa in which she assessed the needs of local sisters across the continent. Shortly after being elected in 2002, the leader of the congregation asked Sr. Ellen to go and see for herself what was happening in the Global South so that she had some sense of the challenges the approximately three hundred Sisters of Notre Dame in South America and Africa face on a daily basis. Having spent time in South America before becoming general treasurer, Sr. Ellen visited sisters in the Democratic

2 / Chapter One

Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe over the next two years, usually staying for two weeks in each place. During her visits, Sr. Ellen, a fifty-eight-year-old Catholic woman born and raised in Greater Boston, was shocked by how much time and effort sisters in the Global South were devoting to basic survival, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. Reflecting back on this experience, Sr. Ellen explained to me, “It doesn’t take long to see . . . I mean it takes long to understand, but it does not take long to see just what they are dealing with.” One of the congregation-wide calls from the 2002 general chapter meeting was fresh in Sr.  Ellen’s mind as she considered the situation: “We SNDs [Sisters of Notre Dame] are called to address, as far as possible, issues of translation and equal access to technology and information.” Sr. Ellen’s conversation with Louis Casey was the beginning of a two-year partnership to develop a system that could harness solar energy to provide electricity, clean water, and internet access to sisters in Africa, which became known as the African Photovoltaic Project. Sr. Ellen’s efforts were also part of a wider movement among women’s religious institutes in the United States to address the inequalities dividing Catholic sisters in the Global North and Global South.1 Brisk and serious, wearing a blue-and-green-plaid jacket with dark slacks and a belt, Sr. Ellen had an air of efficiency as she paused to show me the materials she had gathered in advance of our meeting. Clicking through photographs of her last trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo on a large desktop computer, Sr. Ellen explained how difficult it was initially to convince Congolese and Nigerian Sisters of Notre Dame that the African Photovoltaic Project was worthwhile, as the leadership of both African provinces2 had been skeptical. They had a number of critical questions they wanted answered before it moved forward: Who would know how to use it? What would the impact of solar energy be on the village? What were the politics of the project? Congolese and Nigerian sisters had previous experiences with international development organizations providing complicated and expensive technology. After the organizations left, nobody knew how to maintain or repair it. Even though these women were members of the same Catholic religious order as Sr. Ellen, they feared a similar scenario would result. Sr. Ellen paraphrased the reaction she initially received from African sisters: “No. There are so many of you Americans and you think you know everything and you do not.” Recognizing the initiative would not succeed without the investment of local sisters, Sr. Ellen proceeded carefully. Between 2002 and 2006, the Sisters of Notre Dame focused on design elements, fund-raising, and training

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 3

opportunities for Congolese and Nigerian sisters. In 2004, the congregation received matching grants from the Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to support the project. Concerned about the feasibility of the proposed photovoltaic system, Hilton funders asked the Sisters of Notre Dame to build a prototype, which Louis Casey did the following year at the Cuvilly Arts and Earth Center, an ecologically sustainable farm and school on the congregation’s Ipswich property.3 Between 2005 and 2010, systems were installed in convents across Fugar, Nigeria (2005); Ngidinga, Congo (2006); Awkunanaw, Nigeria (2008); and Kitenda, Lemfu, and Pelende, Congo (2010). Materials were shipped in wooden crates and unloaded and unpacked on site. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congolese sisters helped dig trenches for the cables, and workers carried panels to the roof for installation. Throughout the process, sisters and community members in each location worked side by side, receiving training on how to build and maintain the new equipment. When completed, each three-hundred-thousand-dollar system included solar panels for electricity, batteries to store electricity for up to seven days, and a satellite for communication and internet access. After meeting with Sr. Ellen on that cold morning in January, I left the warmth of the Congregational Mission Office and walked quickly to my parked car. Before turning left out of the parking lot, I stopped momentarily at the life-size bronze statue of the congregation’s foundress, St. Julie Billiart, standing upright with one arm around a young girl holding a book and the other lifted to the white winter sky. The limestone wall behind Julie proclaimed the Notre Dame motto “Ah! qu’il est bon le bon Dieu!” (How good is the good God!) in thin rainbow lettering above her head.

Fast-forward six months and I am traveling with Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame between Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu. Climbing into a spacious white SUV with eight other women from the provincial house, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm to be on the road. Sr. Maryse made sure I was seated in front by the window, telling me to enjoy the view while she double-checked that the front door was firmly closed. Sr. Thérèse, a slight forthright medical doctor, and the friendly middle-aged male driver sat beside me. Before we pulled out of the heavy front gates, Sr.  Élodie spoke sharply from the back seat, asking Sr. Thérèse if my seat belt was securely fastened. Leaving Kimwenza, my eyes remained fixed on the changing landscape outside my window as it gradually transformed from the busy urban life of

4 / Chapter One

Figure 1.1. Statue of St. Julie Billiart in Ipswich, Massachusetts

the Cité Verte commune to rolling hills green with vegetation and tall slim palms waving at a cloudless blue sky. Much to Sr. Thérèse’s amusement, I asked the name of every village we passed through during our two-hour drive, writing our location down in my tiny pocket-sized notebook. I was surprised by the paved road winding between Kimwenza and Kisantu on

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 5

National Highway 1, unusual for the region. It was much smoother than the rough potholed-dirt ascent I had previously taken from the heart of the capital to the plateau where Kimwenza sits. On a good day, the roughly thirty kilometers between the N’djili Airport in Kinshasa and the provincial house in Kimwenza takes an hour to navigate; on a bad day, with poor road conditions, construction delays, and dizzying traffic (embouteillage), it may take five times longer. After my experience jolting through that congestion, I appreciated the clear open highway that took us all the way to Kikolo, where we turned onto the last stretch of bumpy red dirt toward the city of Kisantu. When I left the Kisantu convent a few days later, the three sisters I traveled with all covered their mouths and faces with scarves to avoid breathing the dust as we rocked back and forth along the deteriorating route to Lemfu. Upon arrival, Sr. Jacqueline greeted me in French as I climbed out of the jeep and explained that the superior of the Kisantu community had called ahead to tell her I was coming. A short handsome woman in her late forties with a round face and bright, expressive eyes, Sr.  Jacqueline did not waste any time; she instructed me to follow her to the small redbrick convent, which had a slanting crimson tin roof and an enclosed front porch with a turquoise stripe crossing its cement railing. Speaking more directly with me than the other Congolese superiors I met in Kimwenza and Kisantu, she talked quickly as she showed me the grounds of the primary and secondary schools. I caught my first glimpse of the African Photovoltaic Project when she pointed out the large solar panels that provide energy for the compound. We made our way through a gate to the adjoining cluster of buildings that house the photovoltaic system. Looking around a room with elevated black boxes standing tall on one wall like a gigantic stereo and two rows of large rectangular red batteries stacked on the floor along another wall, I felt as if I had stepped into the future. After pointing out different pieces of equipment, Sr. Jacqueline gestured for me to follow her into the internet cafe, an adjacent room where lengths of printed cloth were draped over tables of computer monitors and keyboards to protect them from the ever-present dust. Looking at the unfamiliar surroundings, it might have been difficult to appreciate the distance and terrain these boxes, batteries, and computers had traveled if I had not experienced for myself the journey from Kinshasa to Lemfu, giving me some small sense of the country’s infrastructure. The physical distances these objects traveled and the relationships that made their journeys possible are at the heart of the transnational story I tell in this book.

6 / Chapter One

Together We Form One: Constructing Transnational Identities My conversation with Sr. Ellen about the birth of the African Photovoltaic Project was my first glimpse into the complicated relationships among Sisters of Notre Dame around the world. Sr. Ellen’s story of collaboration and negotiation with Congolese and Nigerian sisters left me wondering how transnational religious identities are formed, sustained, and challenged in different contexts. At the beginning of this study, it seemed to me that the questions African sisters posed to their Western counterparts concerning access to specialized knowledge, technology, global influence, and local control were questions at the nexus of most partnerships between groups of people in the Global North and Global South. Although there is ongoing popular and scholarly interest in the ways globalization shapes contemporary social life, we still know very little about transnational organizations like the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur or how they influence members’ everyday lives and experiences on the ground. We know even less about how this happens when religion is a defining aspect of the organizations in question.4 Throughout this book, I explore the relationships between US and Congolese Catholic sisters who belong to a single religious organization deliberately constituted across national borders, asking how members work together across boundaries of race, ethnicity, and economic development. I focus on the ways sisters construct their religious and social identities through everyday practices and consider the extent to which members orient their lives to both local and transnational communities. At times, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur I met in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo seemed to have very little in common aside from wearing the same square bronze cross engraved with the initials ND on one side and the motto “Ah! Qu’il est bon le bon Dieu” on the other. When I talked with US sisters in the provincial offices, at their ministry sites, or in the sitting rooms of community houses across Greater Boston, they were usually dressed in modest street clothes—slacks or boxy ankle-length skirts paired with simple blouses, sweaters, and practical loafers. Most sisters wore the Notre Dame cross around their neck, while some opted for a smaller version, no bigger than a quarter and pinned to a collar or lapel. “[The] big ones, they are really heavy right in the neck,” one sister commented, pointing to the “little cross” pin on her collar as we talked in the home office of her Brighton community. Whether engaged in teaching, direct service, pastoral ministry, or organizational leadership, these women have practiced “choice of ministry” since the 1970s. They rely on processes of individual discernment as they work to align person-

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 7

ally fulfilling work with the needs of the surrounding community and the larger congregation. Unless retired or recovering from an illness, surgery, or other health issue, most reside in either an apartment with one or two others or a large house with a handful of sisters in neighborhoods across Greater Boston. A growing number live alone. Not surprisingly, personal and communal religious practices vary widely across these different types of living arrangements. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, I sat with sisters in community rooms and outdoor pavilions on the grounds of convent compounds in Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu. Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame have better access to transportation than most of their neighbors, navigating the long distances between their convents in the Lower Congo or the rough road from the provincial house to downtown Kinshasa in large sports utility vehicles. Nevertheless, daily life takes place within a much smaller radius. Deeply rooted in the community, the more Durkheimian expression of religious life evident within the Congo-Kinshasa Province depends on each member’s full integration and participation in collective practices. Sisters gather for morning and evening prayers in the convent chapel as part of the Liturgy of the Hours and eat three communal meals a day in the réfectoire. Within the compound, most wear brightly patterned African prints wrapped around their waists in long pagnes with different colored cotton T-shirts sporting various peace and justice slogans.5 Apart from the Notre Dame cross, Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame do not wear any jewelry and twist scarves carefully around the crowns of their heads to form the perfect circle of a kitambala that frames the face. In public, Congolese sisters dress more formally in tailored blouses with long, slightly puffed sleeves and matching pagnes. Adopted in response to the authenticité campaign launched by President Mobutu Sese Seko in 1971 to promote a stronger postcolonial national identity,6 this style of dress is common among local women’s religious orders. When the province gathers for vow ceremonies and other celebrations, the community tailors clothing from a common fabric to express a sense of unity. The fabric may be patterned with bold geometric designs; the religious imagery of crosses, churches, and depictions of Mary and Jesus; or personalized congregational symbols.7 During the summer of 2012, I often noticed sisters wearing navy-blue fabric dotted with a pattern of small yellow stars, red flowers, and tiny banners proclaiming “1959–2009,” made to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Congolese branch of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Most Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame work in congregationally sponsored schools and dispensaries adjoining the convents where they live.

8 / Chapter One

In contrast to Boston, where sisters were invited by pastors in the midnineteenth century to teach in parish schools and reside in church convents owned by the archdiocese, Congolese sisters own the land surrounding their schools and convents. Before Congolese independence in 1960, the Catholic Church occupied a privileged position within the Belgian colony. As part of King Leopold II’s 1906 concordat with the Vatican, Belgian Catholic missionaries in the Congo Free State8 received generous state subsidies along with hundreds of acres of land still owned by religious orders today. Despite the dramatic differences in the lives of Congolese and American Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, which are reflected in the chapters of this book, these ethnonationally distinct groups of women frequently told me that they are all members of one family, immediately recognizable to one another as “daughters of Julie.” Pointing to the cross around her neck during our meeting in Ipswich, Sr. Ellen told me, “We were all from the same roots, so everybody knows each other  .  .  . I mean not everybody knows everybody, but there is a sense of unity. Even if I’ve never met you before, if you have this cross on, I know who you are.” Shortly after returning from an education conference in Boston, Sr. Aurélie sat on a couch across from me at the provincial house in Kimwenza and spoke slowly and purposefully: “If you have my cross, you are my sister and we can speak, we can laugh, we can play, we can go for a walk, and together, we form one.” Gesturing to an American sister sitting beside us, she explained, “I know that she is a Sister of Notre Dame. We have the same foundress, we have the same spirituality, we live the same charism, and so we are daughters of the same mother.”9 Across the globe, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur claim common roots as members of a Catholic women’s religious institute founded by a French woman in 1804 and planted in US and Congolese soil by Belgian missionaries in 1840 and 1894. Feelings of kinship and the organizational metaphor of the family notwithstanding, these ethnically, nationally, and geographically distinct groups of women are raised in different cultures. They speak different languages and live out their three religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in divergent economic, political, and social contexts. In each of the sixteen countries where Sisters of Notre Dame formed lasting communities and attracted local religious vocations, there is a singular story of departure, arrival, survival, adaptation, incorporation, and the localization of religious life.10 This book explores these unique histories by showing how US and Congolese women localized European

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 9

Figure 1.2. Map of the Democratic Republic of Congo Source: Prepared by Jennifer Carlton

religious life within global hierarchies built on legacies of colonization, development, and economic inequality across the Global North and South. Considering the varied experiences of US and Congolese members, I ask questions about how transnational religious identities are maintained in different contexts: How is a sense of transnational belonging sustained through objects, texts, travel, communication, and other technologies? As organizations grow globally and come to adopt local forms in new places, where are the points of tension between the transnational and the local? Earlier studies of global migration typically characterize transnationalism as the back-and-forth movements of people between sending and receiving countries.11 Less attention was given to the multidirectional relationships between people who belong to groups constituted across national borders. Sociologist Peggy Levitt challenged these assumptions by drawing attention to religion as an “under-explored site of transnational belonging” and showing how global religious institutions enable immigrants to participate in two cultures at once.12 Arguing that travel is not a prerequisite for transnational activity, Levitt found that individuals who

10 / Chapter One

are primarily rooted in a single location may also be bound to people and resources in another country—“located within a topography that crosses borders.”13 Transnational scholars conceptualize the social and material ties that bind people and places in a number of ways. Proposing a transnational social-fields approach to studying the “networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed,” Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Shiller distinguish between the existence of transnational networks and the consciousness of being embedded within them.14 Because membership in a transnational organization does not necessarily encourage attachments to multiple settings, they argue that individuals who engage regularly in relationships and practices that cross borders exhibit a transnational way of being, and those who recognize this and combine their actions with an awareness of the transnational aspects of their identities express a sense of belonging.15 Other scholars argue that a focus on transnational networks enables scholars to conceptualize topographies that stretch beyond the nation without neglecting the importance of place and the ways in which transnational processes remain “local at all points.”16 Geographers David Featherstone, Richard Phillips, and Johanna Waters define transnational networks as “overlapping and contested material, cultural and political flows and circuits that bind different places together through differentiated relations of power.”17 Drawing from actor-network theory, they argue that transnational spaces, identities, and processes are dynamic, contested, and ongoing rather than fixed.18 Both transnational social-field and transnational network scholars focus on the social meaning people ascribe to their participation in unequal transnational processes. Levitt and Shiller explain this identity formation in terms of awareness, consciousness, and a sense of transnational belonging. Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters ask whether transnational networks are primarily materially constituted through the movement of people and objects or dependent on the formation of collective identities and “imaginative geographies of connection” that include sympathies, affinities, cultural identification, or shared projects and politics.19 This book draws on both approaches to explore the religious topographies that enable Sisters of Notre Dame to embrace collective identities as “women with hearts as wide as the world” and to claim they are at home whenever they meet other members of their order. In the chapters that follow, I show how the material, cultural, and political ties that have developed between Belgian, US, and Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are historically rooted and

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 11

have been temporally constructed within the context of Christian evangelization, imperial rule, and globalization.20 As evident across these national settings, mobile religious communities like the Sisters of Notre Dame are received differently depending on formal and informal relationships between places as well as the degree of separation between church and state. The transnational relationships between Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have both material and symbolic dimensions that are intertwined within shared organizational texts, institutional frameworks, leadership structures, finances, and technologies. They are also present in religious artifacts like the crosses sisters wear or the beloved images of the order’s two foundresses, St.  Julie Billiart and Françoise Blin de Bourdon, that can be found in most Notre Dame communities. At the organizational level, formal transnational relationships between different branches of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are evident in the flow of physical, economic, and human resources between regions. Not every member of the organization has the opportunity to travel across provinces, attend the general chapter meetings that take place within the congregation every six years, or participate regularly in international conferences on education, religious formation, or spirituality. Still, the formation process (through which each sister begins the stages of discerning a call to religious life before making a lifelong commitment to a religious order) exposes her to the distinct history and spiritual mission, or charism, of the Sisters of Notre Dame, as well as the broader organizational goals and practices that guide the community across geographic settings.21 At the individual level, I find that although many Sisters of Notre Dame move through transnational networks and enter transnational social spaces, most leave with their local identities intact.22 Sisters belong to a transnational network that shapes their access to various resources, experiences, and personal relationships, but these ties are not typically the most significant or defining aspects of their daily lives within the organization. US and Congolese sisters who have opportunities to experience the internationality of the congregation through their own travels and leadership positions are more likely to combine their actions with a sense of transnational belonging. The sense of belonging to a global community that is able to act in different places around the world is especially meaningful for US sisters faced with declining membership in the United States. For the most part, however, transnational influences flow between regions through formal organizational pipelines that have less influence on sisters’ everyday practices. With few exceptions, Sisters of Notre Dame remain deeply embedded in their local contexts. In the words of Sr. Jo, an American sister,

12 / Chapter One

“Locally, where I am, has probably shaped me the most.” For the majority of Sisters of Notre Dame, the watershed moments of religious life—from the decision to become a sister to the discernment of new ministries—are most directly influenced by the regional settings where they take place. These stories reveal the “stickiness of place” and demonstrate how members of transnational organizations and networks may remain “embedded in place, unable to escape their local context despite being transnational.”23 Nevertheless, while the local may matter the most for individual Congolese and American sisters as they form collective identities, it is impossible to understand why or how this is the case without looking transnationally at the uneven terrains on which different groups of women within the organization construct their lives.

Unequal Partners As Sr. Ellen worked with other leaders to make plans for the African Photovoltaic Project in 2002, she was inspired by firsthand observations of how radically different sisters’ lives were across the continent and was moved by the organization-wide call to address equal access to technology and information for Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur around the globe. Although the project is innovative in its approach—incorporating training for Congolese and Nigerian sisters and developing environmentally sustainable technologies—it is also part of a longer history of unequal exchange of ideas, practices, and resources between Catholic sisters in the Global South and Global North. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur was one of approximately four hundred new Catholic women’s religious institutes founded in France and dedicated to socially oriented work between 1800 and 1880. Two hundred thousand French women entered religious life during this period, many with the desire to join male missionaries doing work overseas.24 When European governments began enlarging their territories and establishing new colonies across Africa and Asia, imperialists in France and Belgium welcomed the participation of Catholic sisters, whom they perceived as a reliable, compliant, and inexpensive workforce that could provide a domesticating influence.25 Although missions outside the West received the most attention, European sisters also began ministering to growing immigrant populations across North America, Australia, and New Zealand.26 When missionary sisters began evangelizing Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, they initially had no intention of welcoming local women into their communities. The first African sisters entered diocesan

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 13

orders that were established specifically for local women and only later were admitted into the international congregations that first introduced women’s religious life to the region. As Jane Wakahiu argues, “The formation of religious institutes in Africa was an unintended consequence of missionary presence in Africa.”27 While there were at least seventy “indigenous” orders on the continent by 1949, most novitiates were established in the 1960s and 1970s following the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) and the rise of African independence movements.28 Alongside new developments in liturgy and consecrated religious life within the church, Vatican II initiated “outward renewal” by calling for deeper engagement and dialogue with other cultures and religions.29 Even after local women were formally welcomed into religious life, they faced immense obstacles, enduring the ethnocentrism of the missionary sisters who formed them and discouragement from their families for giving up the valued roles of mother and wife. Despite such precarious beginnings, Africa is one of only two continents in the world where women’s religious vocations continue to grow.30 Over the past decade, there has been an increase of 12,786 sisters making

Percentage Growth of Catholic Sisters in Africa by Region (2005-2015) 40% 29%

30%

23% 20%

19%

10% 0% -10%

-9%

-20% -21% -30% Central

Eastern

Northern

Southern

Western

Source: Ngundo and Wiggins, 2017

Figure 1.3. Percentage growth of Catholic sisters in Africa by region (2005–2015) Source: Bibiana M. Ngundo and Jonathon Wiggins, Special Report: Women Religious in Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2017)

14 / Chapter One

Catholic Sisters in Central African Countries 60%

9,459

9,000

50%

Number of Catholic Sisters in 2015

8,000

50%

48%

43%

40%

7,000

30%

6,000

21%

20%

5,000 10% 4,000

3,180

0%

3,000

-5%

-9% 1,992

2,000

-8%

-21%

Percentage Growth, 2005-2015

10,000

-10%

-16% 1,000

345

584

-20%

337

212

245

Chad

Equatorial Guinea

Gabon

DRC

Cameroon

Angola

Central African Republic

Republic of Congo

31

-30%

Sao Tome and Principe Source: Ngundo and Wiggins, 2017

Figure 1.4. Catholic sisters in Central African countries Source: Bibiana M. Ngundo and Jonathon Wiggins, Special Report: Women Religious in Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2017)

temporary or perpetual vows. This growth is taking place primarily in western (23 percent), eastern (29 percent), and central (19 percent) Africa amid declines in northern (−21 percent) and southern (−9 percent) Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the number of sisters has grown from 7,799 in 2005 to 9,459 in 2015, a 21 percent increase in ten years. Women religious in Congo make up 58 percent of sisters in Central Africa, account for 64 percent of growth in the region and almost 13 percent across the continent.31 Social scientists have noted that the “center of gravity” within the global church is shifting from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, and South America.32 However, the few sociologists who turn attention to membership in religious orders outside North America and Europe paint religious life in the Global South with broad brushstrokes, often drawing on general country-level data and unexamined assumptions about life in developing countries.33 This research glosses over the specific cultural, political, economic, and religious histories that distinguish Catholicism in different regions and ignores important variations that may explain differ-

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood / 15

ences in membership as well as the empirical realities of how religious life is practiced on the ground.34 Religious leaders, journalists, and scholars have focused greater attention on the declining number of Catholic sisters in the United States and Europe. This work paints a vivid picture of the internal and external changes in religious life since the Second Vatican Council, both demographically and qualitatively, but does not examine what the transformations of the past five decades mean from the standpoint of women in the Global South.35 During the reforms of Vatican II between 1962 and 1965, Catholic sisters witnessed the church’s most sweeping transformations in centuries as it promoted greater openness and aggiornamento (updating), and sparked a renewal process among religious orders. Vatican II also made clear that Catholic sisters were laity and not members of the clergy, yet their vows and membership within a religious institution clearly separated them from other Catholic laypeople. In response to the mandate of council documents such as the 1965 Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life) and the 1966 Ecclesiae Sanctae (Governing of the Holy Church) on the implementation of council decrees, US sisters rewrote the constitutions of their orders; reexamined their ceremonies, prayers, and rituals; and abandoned many of the rigid rules of obedience and conformity within community life.36 In the wake of these changes, many women made the decision to leave religious life and fewer and fewer decided to enter. The number of Catholic sisters in the US began a steep and rapid decline from 179,954 in 1965 to 45,605 in 2017, a 75 percent decrease in vocations in a little over fifty years.37 With few new vocations and rapidly aging membership, the future of women’s religious institutes in Europe and North America is uncertain. In light of these downward trends, the number of young women entering diocesan and international orders of sisters in Africa has brought renewed interest to discussions of religious vocations.38 The growth in attention paid to the experiences of African sisters has been driven by religious orders as they look to the Global South for “new life” and has been encouraged by US philanthropists through the efforts of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, GHR Foundation, and others. Although most observers recognize that vocations in Africa and Asia are unlikely to reverse broader demographic declines, donor interest in global sisterhood is shining new light on the work African sisters are doing across the continent. The most prominent example is the Hilton Foundation, which established the Hilton Fund for Sisters in 1986 and has awarded a total of $133 million in grants to 537 religious congregations across

16 / Chapter One Catholic Sisters By Region (Number of Sisters Worldwide 670,320) Central and South America 18% Asia and Middle East 27%

Europe 34%

Africa 12% Oceania 1% North America 8%

Source: Pontifical Yearbook, 2017

Figure 1.5. Catholic sisters by region Source: Annuario Pontificio [Pontifical Yearbook] (Vatican Press: Central Office of Church Statistics of the Secretariat of State, 2017)

151 countries.39 In 2013, the Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative launched a five-year strategy to “enhance the vitality of Catholic sisters and their work to advance human development around the globe,” concentrating on sisters in the United States and Africa during its first round of grantmaking.40 As of August 2016, the initiative had funded sixty-eight grants equaling more than $90 million. Through this extensive philanthropic work with Catholic sisters around the world, a network of funders, nonprofit organizations, Catholic media entities, academic research centers, religious congregations, and religious conferences has coalesced around the emergent frameworks of global (Catholic religious) sisterhood and sustainable development.41 In addition to more traditional apostolic endeavors such as running schools, health centers, and orphanages, African sisters are engaged in farming, conservation, climate change discussions, women’s development, and efforts to prevent human trafficking. Since the United Nation’s adoption of its seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015, funders have placed greater emphasis on the sustainable development aspects of sisters’ work across Africa. Comprehensive and broadly conceived, the UN’s

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sustainable development goals offer a compelling but diffuse framework through which sisters’ presence and visibility across diverse sectors can be aligned with the priorities of the international development community.42 Notably, the Hilton Foundation describes sisters as “resourceful, efficient and powerful agents of social change” while the GHR Foundation proposes “Sisters as a Solution” to global development.43 The polysemic nature of sustainable development enables Catholic sisters to translate the goals of their work, which are often motivated by religious commitment, for a broader secular audience.44 Perhaps just as significant to the idea of global sisterhood, SDGs also provide a unifying framework for a heterogeneous group of women’s religious institutes that have diverse regional histories, charisms, ministries, and orientations to the institutional church. In 2016, the Hilton Catholic Sisters Initiative convened “Catholic Sisters: Champions of Sustainable Development in Africa” in Nairobi, bringing together participants from more than twenty countries and 125 leaders from religious orders in more than ten African countries. Notably, coverage of the meeting reported that “thousands of sisters are already working on missions that reflect the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” but also acknowledged that many sister participants “were only marginally familiar with the U.N.’s development agenda before the convening.”45 Although the frameworks of global sisterhood and sustainable development provide valuable support and visibility for the social ministries Catholic sisters are doing around the world—often under conditions of extreme poverty, isolation, and political repression—they conceal the heterogeneity of women’s experiences and motivations for doing this work. African sisters face numerous challenges in their religious lives such as lack of family support, insufficient funding, conflicting cultural schools of thought, religious habits, and access to education and modern technology.46 Some of the fault lines in African religious life are present in the tensions between members of local and international congregations, while others relate to divisions between anglophone and francophone countries. Like members of other international religious orders across Africa, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the Democratic Republic of Congo grapple with the meaning and consequences of Western resources at a personal and organizational level. For Congolese sisters, access to physical and material resources remains one of the greatest points of tension between the local and the transnational. During the colonial period, missionary sisters were almost completely dependent on their counterparts in Belgium to meet the basic needs of everyday life within the convent. Following independence in 1960, Sisters of Notre Dame in Zaire operated as a “vice province” of Bel-

18 / Chapter One

gium. After it was decided at the 1975 general chapter meeting that Zaire would become an autonomous province, the transition from Belgian to Congolese leadership proceeded gingerly. Although only one Belgian Sister of Notre Dame remains in the country today, the Congo-Kinshasa Province continues to rely heavily on sisters in the West for funding. The resources that flow between hemispheres through religious orders and the Catholic Church infuse local settings with complicated questions and contradictions. Catholic sisters in Africa—especially those who belong to international institutes—appear affluent when measured by regional standards. While Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame do not possess personal wealth, their access to communal resources and funding from abroad sets them apart in a country with one of the highest incidences of poverty in the world.47 Sisters directly confront these local perceptions when navigating relationships to family and community members in the places where they work. Just as Sr. Ellen hoped when she began laying the groundwork for the African Photovoltaic Project, the development of this solar energy system has improved access to electricity, clean water, internet, educational resources, medical equipment, and other services across villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. US and Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame shared the outcomes of the African Photovoltaic Project on a panel at the United Nations in 2012 and have received broad recognition for their work. Since 2005, the congregation has raised more than $5 million to support the initiative and invested $6 million in the installation of photovoltaic systems.48 Despite this growth and an emphasis on building partnerships across regions, achieving greater parity between hemispheres and more equitable relationships within the congregation remains an elusive goal. The Struggle for Unity Some of the obstacles sisters face when trying to work together across boundaries of race, ethnicity, and economic development became evident as I learned about the tempestuous origins of earlier cross-province endeavors. The Congregational Mission Office where I first met Sr.  Ellen in Ipswich grew out of the International Office for Africa and Latin America, which was established in 1990. The evolution of the office’s name and vision reflect the Sisters of Notre Dame’s ongoing struggle to transform missionary relationships of dependence between provinces and to develop a more inclusive model of exchange between regions for the future. Sr. Lynn, age sixty-eight, shared her account of this history when I met her in Quincy

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one evening to talk about how models of fund-raising in the congregation have changed over time. “I talk a lot,” she warned me. “I mean once I get started.” Over the next three hours, Sr. Lynn told me the story of her religious vocation and explained how her experiences as a missionary in Nicaragua led her to imagine new possibilities for collaboration within the Sisters of Notre Dame’s existing transnational networks. In preparation for the general chapter meeting of 1980, the congregation’s international governance team began to identify countries where Sisters of Notre Dame could cultivate a stronger global presence. Focusing on Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and China as potential mission sites, leadership published a small booklet to educate the congregation on the three countries. At the time, Sr.  Lynn was a high school vice principal. As she learned more about the political situation in Nicaragua, Sr. Lynn felt called to raise awareness regarding US involvement in the Contra war. She began working with five other Sisters of Notre Dame to develop curriculum for schools and parishes. When they were able to take longer breaks from their full-time ministries, the sisters rented a van and traveled across the United States holding educational workshops. In 1983, this work attracted the attention of the organization Church Women United. Sr. Lynn was invited to make a nine-day pilgrimage to Managua during Pope John Paul II’s visit, traveling with thirty other women of different Christian denominations, including Mennonites, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Evangelical groups. The day before Pope John Paul  II addressed the nation, Sr. Lynn attended a wake for a group of young men from the Jesuit University in Managua who had been ambushed while picking coffee beans. In the same plaza where the pope would speak, grieving mothers and fathers surrounded simple wooden coffins holding the bodies of their eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-old sons. Sr. Lynn had never traveled outside the country before and her understanding of human suffering was permanently altered that day along with her view of what it meant to be “church united.” Two years later, she came back to Nicaragua for three years of service as part of the solidarity movement. Returning home to Boston in 1988, Sr.  Lynn brought with her new questions about how to fund the work of Catholic sisters in the Southern Hemisphere. Reflecting on how much the Maryknoll missionaries she lived with in Nicaragua had been able to accomplish with small donations, Sr. Lynn began to share her experiences with Sr. Marcia, who was the general treasurer of the congregation at the time. “Do you remember the letter you wrote me that first month?” she asked Sr. Marcia when they met again in Boston. “I still have it.”

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Sr. Marcia was surprised. “No way!” While in Managua, Sr. Lynn had written personal fund-raising appeals to everyone she knew, hoping to raise enough money to stay in the country, and she had received a response from Sr. Marcia. One line from that letter stayed with her: “Now you do what you need to do and we will figure out the rest.” After reminding Sr. Marcia of this, Sr. Lynn shared what she had been thinking about since her return. “‘I don’t know the data, but I know our sisters in Africa and Latin America need support. They’re going to need support for the future. If you have sisters continuing to grow like the sisters in the Congo . . . We have Congo, we have Zimbabwe, we have Kenya, we have Nigeria, right?’ I said, ‘How are those people going to continue? How is Nicaragua going to continue?’” This sparked Sr. Marcia’s interest. “Do you want to try something?” she asked Sr.  Lynn. “What about taking on a research project for six months while you are waiting for this other parish thing to open up? What about doing some research on putting together what the congregation can do to help developing nations? [Then] you present it to the general leadership.” Surprised at Sr.  Marcia’s enthusiasm, Sr.  Lynn agreed and took on what turned out to be a bigger challenge than she could ever have imagined. Over the course of the next six months, Sr.  Lynn knocked on doors and met with development directors across religious congregations as well as the public sector. She wrote to people and searched for grant possibilities, gathering as much information as possible. After compiling her research, Sr. Lynn presented a proposal for the creation of the International Office for Africa and Latin America to two members of the congregational leadership team. They were receptive. “Why don’t you test it out on sisters from Africa and Latin American who are here for the general chapter?” What Sr. Lynn and members of the leadership team did not realize as she walked into the room to meet leaders of provinces across the Global South was that unbeknownst to much of the congregation, they had been doing their own fund-raising for “eons.” Reflecting back on these unlikely beginnings, Sr. Lynn compared herself to a “skunk at a lawn party.” While some sisters welcomed the new initiative, others felt threatened by it because she was proposing to interface with the “bailiwick of people” that helped them raise money. Nobody had fully recognized how widespread or disparate fund-raising efforts were across different regions, and the prospect of institutionalizing these efforts was met with ambivalence. Leaving

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one of the first meetings about the proposal, an American sister turned to Sr. Lynn and told her she was trying to put a square peg in a round hole. “I am?” Sr. Lynn pressed the sister. “Yes. I don’t know how you are going to do this. I really don’t.” Despite this mixed response, the resolution to establish an international office to support sisters in developing countries was passed at the 1990 general chapter. The newly elected leadership of the congregation asked Sr.  Lynn to direct the International Office for Africa and Latin America, which she did for the next seventeen years. “You know,” Sr. Lynn confided, “the sister who told me that was a square peg in a round hole—she was right!” After three years, Sr. Lynn realized that the original vision for the office was, in her words, “shortsighted and not a good vision at all.” Religious life was beginning to move in the direction of a more inclusive paradigm. Sr.  Lynn went back to general leadership and explained, “Look at our congregation. What is it? It needs a kind of unification—a unity. We are not Africa. We are not the developing nations and the first world. We are a community of sisters trying to work with each other, to help each other out and secure sustainability for those who do not have it. I think what we need to look at is a model that is inclusive of everyone.” Although the international office continued to prioritize the needs of sisters in the Global South, its mission evolved to focus on sharing resources throughout the congregation. Implementing these changes continued to be a challenge, as Sr. Lynn was asking sisters who were already struggling to raise money for their own units to embrace this broader global vision. Undaunted, Sr. Lynn spearheaded efforts to raise the first million dollars for an endowment to support sisters in the Global South. The International Office for Africa and Latin America was renamed the Congregational Mission Office, and in 2004, Sr. Lynn retired as director. She left the position tired but pleased to see her work come to fruition in a robust Jubilee Fund, which supports the formation and living expenses of sisters in developing countries, and a ministry-support fund for which all sisters in the congregation are eligible. In 2006, the general treasurer began gathering sisters from Africa and Latin America annually to allocate the interest earned on the Jubilee endowment principle across their provinces. Each participating province shares a budget outlining its projected expenses for the coming year, and leaders discuss the anticipated economic needs of different regions and negotiate among themselves before reaching a consensus regarding how the resources will be distributed. Although the circumstances of the provinces

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vary from year to year, the gap between income and expenses in developing countries remains considerable. During the early years of the Jubilee Fund, this financial support helped sisters meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and building maintenance. As sisters in the Global South have secured greater access to education and higher salaries in their countries, some of the economic disparities between provinces are narrowing. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, these funds may now be dedicated to higher education or the development of new local infrastructure. Without diminishing these recent achievements, there remains an unequal pattern of engagement and investment in the work of the Congregational Mission Office. Sisters who have worked at the office were less likely to gloss over divisions between sisters in different regions than others I spoke with in the United States. Sr. Gail described the relationship between sisters across regions as “very delicate” although they love one another. “Some of the relationships are good. Sometimes you get whacked,” she explained. “You step back and say, ‘Hey, look, I didn’t mean it . . . And then you have to say, ‘I know I did this wrong.’” While helping with fund-raising appeals, another sister questioned the internationality of sisters’ efforts to raise money and observed that it was all “New England people” working in the office. “It comes from a very US perspective,” she explained, “because that is where the donors are. I mean that is who we ask money of . . . and so I have been pondering this. How do we do fund-raising internationally?” While the congregation has developed more collective and inclusive processes for distributing the Jubilee Fund over time, US sisters, especially those in the Northeast, remain at the forefront of efforts to raise money for sisters in other parts of the world. Across the congregation, many transnational patterns of engagement are similar to the Congregational Mission Office, bound up in regional configurations that reflect local history rather than the global reach of the organization. Power and resources remain heavily concentrated in the West even as efforts like the Jubilee Fund reveal how Catholic sisters are working to redirect and reclaim some of the traditional flows of resources and influence between the Global North and South. Sharp demographic shifts have eroded but not broken apart the regional containers that hold these transnational nodes. The Journey Ahead Understanding the experiences of sisters Ellen, Jacqueline, Aurélie, Jo, Lynn, and Gail—who represent only a handful of the approximately 1,400 Sisters of Notre Dame living in sixteen countries on five continents—

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requires both a historical and a contemporary lens. These women belong to a religious institution that has been transplanted in different environments over time and influenced by shifts in the global church as well as the idiosyncrasies of national contexts. The tensions between transnational and local practices among Sisters of Notre Dame reflect longstanding struggles within Catholicism to balance the universal mission and claims of the church with local concerns. They also speak to broader processes of globalization, political and economic imperialism, and cultural hegemony. In chapter 2, I begin to situate Sisters of Notre Dame within a longer history of women’s religious orders and Catholic missionary endeavors. I draw on the approach of Diana Wong and Peggy Levitt to distinguish how “religious assemblages”—made up of actors, objects, and ideas—move and cluster in the ways they do across places shaped by history, politics, and national and ethnic identities.49 Without recognizing the symbiotic relationship between Catholicism and expanding European empires during the Scramble for Africa, it is impossible to understand the growth of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur or the complicated roles Catholic sisters played in colonization efforts across the continent. The Catholic Church’s imposition of colonial rule is well documented by scholars, but historians like Phyllis Martin point out that “the process of decolonization as it was worked out within and by the missionary church” has received much less attention.50 Together, the struggles of the first Congolese women to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame and the ongoing localization of religious life across different regions offer a window into these dynamic and turbulent processes, which remain unfinished. The stories that unfold in the chapters that follow shed new light on the extent to which women on different continents are working together to overcome vast divides of history, geography, and culture. In Unequal Partners, I invite readers on a journey from Ipswich to Kimwenza, Kisantu, Lemfu, Namur, and Cuvilly. As I travel through the transnational networks that bind the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur across time and place, I hope to give you a sense of the “proximity and distance” between people and places that is not defined by physical location but by the construction of social and religious identities and the material and symbolic ties connecting them.51

T WO

Julie Is Our Ancestor Unearthing the Roots of Transnationalism

At the Boston Province Office of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Everett, Massachusetts, I received a friendly welcome from Sr. Megan. Weaving between desks on the first floor of the building, Sr.  Megan joked with the other women, “Be careful what you say! Casey is doing research on the Sisters of Notre Dame.” Sitting in her upstairs office, bright and flooded with sunlight on this unusually warm day in March, I noticed a small photo of the congregational leadership team hanging on the wall, and a tall wooden giraffe and a string of carved birds decorating her bookshelf. Amid the rows of books, a double picture frame displaying side-by-side images of two sisters in full habit caught my eye. I recognized the sisters as St.  Julie Billiart and Mother Saint-Joseph (Françoise Blin de Bourdon), the two French women whose unlikely friendship led to the founding of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1804. After discussing my interest in the congregation, Sr. Megan introduced me to Sr. Pat, the moderator of the Boston leadership team. We stood talking in the hall for a few minutes before Sr.  Pat motioned for me to step into her office where she pointed out a small colorful painting framed on her wall. Standing next to me, she explained that the picture of St. Julie surrounded by women of different nationalities depicted a vision Julie had in Compiègne two years after founding the Sisters of Notre Dame. According to congregational tradition, Julie saw her sisters crossing oceans to do their ministries, “carrying the light of the Gospels throughout the world.”1 Sr. Pat related the now familiar tale of how Julie Billiart established the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Amiens, France, to serve the poor. Julie believed her sisters should go wherever there was a need they could meet, planting the seeds of a religious community whose members would eventually describe themselves as “women with hearts as wide as the world.”2 When

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a local bishop threatened Julie’s leadership and compromised the mission of the institute, she relocated the community to Namur, where she had the support of local church leaders and the freedom to cultivate this vision.

Four months later and some 6,500 miles from where I began my fieldwork in Boston, I sat in the chapel at the provincial house in Kimwenza, Democratic Republic of Congo, looking once again into the smiling face of St.  Julie. Encircled by sunflowers and depicted alongside a more serious Françoise, this image of Julie was framed high on the wall behind a colorful altar draped in blue-patterned fabric. Although slightly faded, the picture reminded me of Sr. Megan’s parallel portraits of the congregation’s founders. Studying Julie’s features closely in the chapel where Congolese sisters gather for prayer every morning and evening, I pondered what this European woman, the “smiling saint” who grew up in rural France during the French Revolution, represents to two groups of sisters on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Before departing for Kinshasa, Sr. Maureen, who spent time in different African provinces while doing religious formation work, drew my attention to the close relationship both US and Congolese members have to their foundress. She told me, “You’ll find this here, and you’ll find it there [in Congo] too. I think one of the commonalities is a very deep love for Julie Billiart and the sense of God’s goodness.” Other sisters credited the prolific research and writing of Superior General Mary Linscott, between 1969 and 1978, for this close relationship to Julie. “I would say everyone in the congregation credits that whole ability to have the letters of Julie [and] to look at the charism to Mary Linscott’s efforts to promote that,” Sr. Anne told me. “That was a pivotal point, I think, and somehow we did it better than others [during Vatican II renewals]—and that is said with humility.” My travels confirmed these insights: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in both the US and Congo see themselves as united by a deep devotion to Julie and the work she did. Although they are located in different countries and on different continents than where Julie Billiart founded her institute two centuries ago, communities of American and Congolese women trace their origins to Julie and speak of her as intimately as a friend or family member. They also credit her with providing the global mission and spirit that animates the organization today. In the months I spent with US sisters before traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo, I was struck by how often they related to Julie on a personal level. At the ministry sites I visited across Boston, it was common for sisters to tell me that they were “doing Julie’s work” or that “Julie would

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fit right in” with the community if she were alive today. Sisters joked that they talk about Julie in the present tense, as if she were still alive and working side by side with them. When describing their religious lives, many women framed their personal vocations and the purpose of their ministries in terms of Julie’s faith in the goodness of God, her commitment to education, and her desire to work with those living in poverty. In moments of need, some sisters said that they petitioned Julie personally, asking for her help in accomplishing the ministries they feel called to do. At the provincial house in Kimwenza, Congolese sisters called on Julie as an ancestor—an honored role within a society that reveres and invokes those who have lived good lives worth emulating. “Since Julie is our ancestor, it is under this inspiration that we are able to follow her footsteps,” the leader of the Congo-Kinshasa Province shared. Later, Sr. Mamy explained, “You see, for us in Africa . . . if I have a problem, I go invoke them [ancestors]. I invoke them and the words I’m asking are realized.” She continued, saying she can invoke Julie like she would other ancestors—to intervene and offer assistance: “Now I say, ‘Yes, she’s hearing me, she’s listening to me.’ What I asked of her, I have got it.” Sr.  Henriette referred to Julie as “our ancestor in faith” and reflected, “She lived a life full of goodness. She discovered in her life that God was good. . . . I am here as an SND of St. Julie Billiart, who is the ancestor of the SND. I, too, proclaim the goodness of God.” Telling the story of how American and Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame came to see themselves as daughters of Julie and sisters of the same mother requires a step back into history. Beneath the cherished founding narratives of St. Julie that are told across the congregation is the tale of how the Sisters of Notre Dame’s mission was worked out in varying regional contexts at different points in time. In order to trace these developments, I draw on Diana Wong and Peggy Levitt’s framework to distinguish how “religious assemblages” made up of religious actors, objects, and ideas move and cluster in the ways they do with attention to carriers of religion, geographies of circulation, and sites of encounter.3 I take up the questions they pose: “What explains how and why things that are circulating and things already in place come together as they do?” and “How do we explain the constant accretion and shedding that happens as religious assemblages travel?” As Wong and Levitt argue, the geographies that religious actors and objects traverse are not “virgin territories” but places marked by history, politics, and national and ethnic identities.4 This chapter focuses on the European, American, and Congolese foundations of the Sisters of Notre Dame and traces the colonial

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routes through which missionary sisters first traveled, bringing with them religious beliefs, practices, aspirations, and relationships formed in their homeland as well as ideas and expectations about their new destinations and the people they would encounter. I begin with a biography of Julie Billiart before explaining the factors that led the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur to expand beyond Europe and that influenced the initial growth of the congregation during the second evangelization of Congo. When transnational studies treat nation-states as equal and sovereign actors on a global stage, they risk overlooking the unequal distribution and exercise of power that enables some states to intervene in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of other territories and regions.5 The work of anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen reminds us that like other forms of migration, religious migration is heavily path-dependent, influenced by past patterns. The global expansion of the Sisters of Notre Dame was made possible by “colonial pathways and historical connections” between Europe, North America, and Africa.6 In this chapter, I focus primarily on the development of the Congo-Kinshasa Province (chapter 6 describes the development of the Massachusetts provinces in greater detail). The growth of the Sisters of Notre Dame in the Democratic Republic of Congo reveals the lasting influence and reach of Belgian rule through what Hansen calls “post-imperial formations,” which persist long after the formal apparatus of the colonial state is dismantled.7 From its inception, the global expansion of the congregation depended on the imperial partnerships between colonial governments and the Catholic Church. Through the experiences of Congolese sisters, we see how the mentalities, hierarchies, and commonsense understandings of colonization may survive beyond the older imperial orders that created them.8

The Founding of the Sisters of Notre Dame Marie Rose “Julie” Billiart was born in Cuvilly on July 12, 1751, to a French artisan family that had lived in the Picardy region for generations, working as merchants, bakers, thatchers, stonecutters, weavers, cattle dealers, masons, and tillage farmers. The sixth child born to Marie Louise Antoinette Braine and Jean François, a farmer and shopkeeper, Julie grew up in Cuvilly and attended the local village school. She received a good education for a girl of her social class. When not at school, she worked with her parents and brother in the fields. In her spare time, she taught children who could not afford to attend the village school how to read and write, and her

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reputation for visiting sick villagers soon earned her the nickname “saint of Cuvilly.”9 While recovering from a fever in 1782, a local doctor treated Julie’s ongoing symptoms with six months of bloodletting that left her paralyzed and wracked by violent convulsions. Julie remained confined to her bed, where she received visitors, counseling local women of different social classes and providing religious instruction to children. After the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, Julie was alarmed to witness the local population and members of the aristocracy turn against the Catholic Church. By November, the new government had nationalized the church and confiscated all its property. Monasteries, convents, and charitable religious congregations were suppressed, religious vows were outlawed, and the Catholic Church lost its legal status. Under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, every priest was required to sign an oath of allegiance to the government and deny loyalty to the pope. Clerics who refused to sign the oath by the end of the year faced imprisonment and death. Although she was still confined to bed, Julie’s reputation grew through her early struggles against the secularization of France. A charismatic leader in the Weberian sense, Julie was considered a saint by some and a religious fanatic by others. As her notoriety grew, it became too dangerous for Julie to remain in Cuvilly, and she fled to Gournay-sur-Aronde and then Compiègne before settling in Amiens with her niece. In Amiens, Julie met Françoise Blin de Bourdon, a thirty-eight-year-old daughter of a viscount who had recently been released from prison. Although Françoise wrote in later years that she was initially repulsed by Julie’s invalid condition, an unlikely friendship began to develop between the pair. Over time, a small community formed around the two women and began gathering daily at Julie’s bedside to learn about the Gospels and cultivate spiritual practices. In 1797, the Little Terror brought a new wave of persecution against members of the church. Julie and Françoise fled to Bettencourt, a small estate outside of Amiens where they lived for four years. During this time, Julie met Père Joseph Varin, a member of the recently suppressed Society of Jesus (then known as Fathers of the Faith), who encouraged Julie to found her own religious institute following Napoléon’s 1801 concordant with the Vatican.10 A counterrevolutionary during the French Revolution, Julie was committed to the re-evangelization of France after it ended. Like other devout French Catholics at the beginning of the nineteenth century, she was concerned with the declining authority of the church in the country and the lives of its citizens. On February 2, 1804, Julie, Françoise, and another young woman consecrated themselves to God and “promised to devote

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their lives to the education of orphans and to the formation of teachers who were to go where they were needed—never fewer than two—to instruct the poor, free of charge.”11 Because it was the Feast of the Purification of Mary, the small band called themselves Sisters of Notre Dame. The congregation dates the founding of the community to this mass.12 At the time of the institute’s founding, Julie Billiart was still paralyzed and largely confined to a chair. However, three months later, she would make a miraculous recovery and regain the use of her legs during a novena to the Sacred Heart. After not being able to walk for twenty-two years, Julie shocked her community by walking into the room upright and unassisted as the novena came to a close. The sisters marked the occasion by gathering in the chapel to sing a hymn of thanksgiving. As Julie regained mobility, her plans for the community grew more ambitious. Two years later on the Feast of the Purification of Mary (February 2, 1806), Julie experienced the ecstasy portrayed on Sr. Pat’s wall in Everett and she understood that her sisters were meant to “carry the light of the Gospels to the nations” beyond the boundaries of any one diocese.13 Julie made the first step in realizing this vision when she traveled to Flanders, where she began preparations to open another convent. Over the next twelve years, she would make 120 journeys to establish secondary houses in Saint-Nicolas (1806), Montdidier (1807), Namur (1807), Jumet (1808), Rubempré (1808), Saint-Hubert (1809), Gand (1810), Zele (1811), Raineville (1812), Adenne (1813), Gembloux (1813), and Fleurus (1814). During these travels, Julie kept a close correspondence with other sisters, instructing new teachers to attend to children’s most basic personal needs before attempting spiritual or academic lessons—an approach that guided the future endeavors of the congregation. She believed that feeding and clothing children was the first step in showing them God’s love. Although Julie did not live to see the worldwide expansion of the Sisters of Notre Dame before her death in 1816 at the age of sixty-four, she envisioned her sisters crossing oceans to make “the Good God” known.14 Julie believed so strongly in this vision that she moved her community from Amiens to Namur in 1809 when the local bishop attempted to restrict her travels and contain the young religious order within his own diocese. Faced with the decision to accept diocesan control of the Sisters of Notre Dame or leave her homeland, Julie relocated to a city where she had the support of local church leaders and would not be required to compromise her own leadership or influence over the structure and mission of the organization. By asserting that she was above all obedient to God and the larger church hierarchy, Julie Billiart continued to resist the unwanted interfer-

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ence of individual priests throughout her life. Because of her leadership, the Sisters of Notre Dame belong to a small group of nineteenth-century religious congregations headed by charismatic women who were able to circumvent direct control of their communities by male clerics and develop beyond the borders of their home dioceses.15 As Julie hoped, the Sisters of Notre Dame enjoyed greater freedom in Namur to expand and develop with the support of Bishop Pisani de la Gaude. Establishing a new motherhouse, the community committed itself to the three virtues—simplicity, obedience, and charity—that would characterize the spirit of the order in the future. Under the leadership of Julie and then Françoise, who became known as Mo. Saint-Joseph, the Sisters of Notre Dame became a thriving European congregation, eager to participate in the global Catholic missionary effort that was growing to include more and more women.16 The opportunity to realize Julie’s global vision first presented itself when Bishop John B. Purcell of Cincinnati visited the motherhouse in 1839. Prior to 1840, the most fruitful women’s religious orders in the United States were of American origin.17 However, the young country’s population was growing rapidly, and many US bishops began turning to religious communities in Europe for assistance. When Bishop Purcell stopped in Namur while on a “begging tour” to recruit European sisters to serve as religious educators in his diocese, he learned that although the Sisters of Notre Dame educated upper-class women at their academies and boarding schools, their mission was to provide education to impoverished women and children.18 Several young sisters were eager to go to Cincinnati after hearing the bishop describe the needs of the city, and the congregation left a lasting impression on Bishop Purcell. After returning home to Ohio, he sent a formal request for assistance to Mo. Ignace who succeeded Mo. Saint-Joseph as superior general after her death in 1838. Having always wanted to travel to America herself, Mo. Ignace (Thérèse) Goethals from Ghent had made a personal promise to make God’s name known and loved in the United States.19 She responded enthusiastically to Purcell’s request by individually selecting eight sisters for the new mission. Despite opposition from their families and a limited knowledge of US geography, the first missionary Sisters of Notre Dame gathered at the motherhouse in August 1840 to complete a final retreat and prepare for their departure. On September 3, 1840, Mo. Ignace accompanied the eight women to the Eliza Thornton in Antwerp, where they boarded along with two priests and a handful of Jesuit scholastics, bound for Ohio.20 The first Sisters of Notre Dame to cross the Atlantic were part of the initial wave

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Figure 2.1. Tombs of Mo. Joseph (Françoise Blin de Bourdon) and Mo. Ignace (Thérèse) Goethals at the Heritage Centre of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Namur, Belgium

of European women religious to establish permanent foundations in the United States, which was considered mission territory by the Vatican until 1908.21 Like the Sisters of Notre Dame, most of these newly arrived congregations made their homes in the valleys of Ohio or Mississippi because of ongoing westward expansion.22 After establishing a community in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur continued to expand to other regions, sending groups of missionaries from Namur to Oregon in 1844, Great Britain in 1845, and Guatemala in 1859.

Catholic Sisters in the Scramble for Africa When Mo. Aimée de Jesus (Élodie) Dullaert became the seventh superior general in 1888, it was the first time US sister delegates were present for the election of the congregation’s leader. In 1894, Mo. Aimée de Jesus agreed to send Sisters of Notre Dame to the Congo Free State; at the time, only one other group of women religious, the Sisters of Charity of Ghent, was working in the vast territory. Belgian missionaries from the Society of Jesus had arrived in the Congo Free State two years before at the request of King

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Leopold II, who had drawn the borders of his personal colony in 1885. Before departing for their new mission, Jesuits approached Mo. Aimée de Jesus in Namur for assistance because they believed it would be impossible to convert Congolese families to Christianity without the help of women. In his first letter from the Jesuit mission in Kimwenza to his superior in 1893, Fr. Van Hencxthoven was already anticipating the arrival of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur: “The vast plateau will offer the mission the great advantage of being able to install the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur at a little distance from our residence when they come to found their school and their orphanage for little black girls . . . I like to think that by the middle of next year, everything will be ready for these excellent Sisters who will be one of the principal supports of our mission by ensuring the future of our indigenous Christian families by the sound education of the young negro women who will be entrusted to them.”23 As seven missionary sisters embarked on the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur’s first endeavor in Africa, none of them imagined that one day their convents on the continent would be filled with local sisters who shared their love for Julie Billiart. Departing from Antwerp for the Congo Free State on June 6, 1894, sisters Théophanie de la Passion, Alphonsius, Marie de bon Secours, Rose-Joseph, Thérèse de l’Assomption, Ignatia de la Croix, and Alberte des Anges did not have any specific directives for their apostolic work. They left Belgium with an invitation from the Society of Jesus and a recommendation from the Propaganda Fide in Rome that they use their resources to work for the ransom and conversion of enslaved people.24 In the eyes of the congregation, the primary goal of the missionary sisters was to evangelize Congolese women. They did not anticipate that two decades later, some of these women would ask to become Sisters of Notre Dame themselves. During the first Portuguese endeavors to evangelize the region in the 1600s, there were a number of unsuccessful attempts to bring orders of sisters to the Kingdom of Kongo; however, members of the church hierarchy discouraged female missionaries from traveling to Africa until well into the nineteenth century because they did not believe women were fit for the task of preaching.25 These attitudes began to shift after the French Revolution as imperial powers enlisted the help of Catholic sisters to expand their territories. Despite the anticlerical zeal of French republicanism, women’s religious life in France was flourishing. The Institute of the Sisters of Notre Dame was one of approximately four hundred new women’s religious orders established in France between 1800 and 1880.26 Part of what distinguished these communities from other religious orders of women in

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the Catholic Church was a dedication to socially oriented apostolic work like education, nursing, and catechism rather than living a cloistered monastic life. Sisters worked with socially vulnerable populations like widows, orphans, the elderly, domestic workers, prisoners, and people with physical disabilities. Many of the congregations founded in Europe and North America during this period were also established as pontifical institutes, which gave them greater autonomy in governance and lifestyle than diocesan institutes under the direct authority of a male superior general.27 As Julie and Françoise’s early struggles with the bishop of Amiens demonstrate, being accountable to the Vatican was often preferable to being under the jurisdiction of a local bishop who might stand in the way of a congregation trying to expand beyond his own diocese and control. Recognizing the human resource potential of the growing numbers of Catholic sisters, France led the way in encouraging religious orders to take up the work of foreign missions. Although committed to secularism and laïcité at home, the French republican government perceived a strategic advantage in enlisting this inexpensive source of labor in the colonies. Imperialists were willing to subsidize missionaries because they believed sisters were a pliable and industrious workforce that could provide girls in French colonies with religious and spiritual formation, making them moral mothers and “the keystone of a strong republic.”28 With the support of the French state, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny began evangelizing the continent of Africa as early as 1819. As the first group of women religious in Africa, the order sent missionaries to Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leon, and eventually settled in the French Congo in 1892.29 In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, many European countries began to look beyond their own borders for raw materials to fuel the growth of capitalism. Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain all hoped to profit by claiming a piece of preindustrial Africa. By the 1880s, the European competition for land and resources was so intense that it became known as the Scramble for Africa. King Leopold II of Belgium played a central role in the emergence of the “new imperialism” that placed the continent at the center of Europe’s colonial imagination, ambition, and greed. As king of one of the smallest countries in Europe, King Leopold II had long dreamed of increasing the reputation, power, and influence of Belgium by acquiring a colony. When he ascended the throne in 1865, this desire became an obsession. After trying to buy colonies from the Portuguese and Dutch, he turned his attention to Africa, where there was only a limited European presence along some coastal regions and a few interior areas in the south and east.30

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King Leopold II laid the groundwork for his African conquest in 1876 while hosting a geographical conference in Brussels. Presenting himself as a philanthropist concerned with eliminating the Afro-Arab slave trade, Leopold established the International African Association with the stated goal of promoting civilization on the continent. As part of his strategy to annex Congo, he offered protection and subsidies for Protestant missionaries building missionary stations in the Upper Congo. The first members of the  Missionary Society of Baptists arrived from Great Britain in 1878. While initially supportive of Leopold’s promise to establish a Congo freetrade zone where missionaries could move unencumbered, these same Protestant missionaries would eventually become some of his most severe critics.31 In 1879, King Leopold II established the International Association of the Congo to further promote his interests in the region and consolidate control of the Congo basin. He hired explorer and journalist Sir Henry Morton Stanley to travel across Congo, negotiating treaties with local chiefs and planting the blue, single-starred flag of the International African Association.32 As competition for African territory grew fierce, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany organized the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, which established guidelines governing European conquest of Africa and specified that European powers could only claim an area of Africa it “effectively occupied.”33 At the conference, King Leopold II convinced other European participants to recognize him as the legitimate authority in the Congo basin. The United States and Germany had acknowledged Leopold’s claim to Congo earlier that year. On May 29, 1885, King Leopold II christened the territory État Indépendant du Congo by royal decree and proclaimed himself sovereign of the territory. The Congo Free State was the world’s only private colony. Although King Leopold II never visited the region himself, he quickly began to reap its profits. At home, most Belgians realized their king had acquired a colony many times larger than their own country. They understood these developments presented new opportunities for lucrative commerce, but it still proved difficult for Leopold to recruit enough Belgians to administer the vast Congo Free State. Some members of the Belgian government believed the colony an extravagance their small country could not afford, and King Leopold II often relied on foreigners to fill government posts. Eventually, he turned to Belgian religious orders to extend his authority across the territory. In contrast to French Catholic missionaries, who remained suspicious of the nationalist and the imperialist motivations of their secular government, Belgian Catholic missionaries were more likely to be monarchists support-

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ive of their country’s colonial interests. In the Congo Free State, they were soon perceived as an extension of the white colonial government, mediating between the local population and the administration. While British, American, and Swedish Protestant missionaries grew more critical of Leopold over time, the Catholic Church remained closely aligned with the colonial regime and deeply implicated in state violence until the middle of the twentieth century.34

La Trinité Coloniale in the Congo Free State On July 2, 1894, seven Sisters of Notre Dame landed along the western coast of Congo in the port city of Matadi. Accompanied by Fr. de Hert, Br. de Sadeleer, and seventy local baggage carriers, they traveled fifteen days by rail and on foot to reach the Jesuit mission in Kimwenza. Located on a plateau above the city of Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), they found a house constructed on piles with straw-covered planks awaiting them. According to the records of the congregation, three local girls who had been rescued from slave traders stayed at the house to assist them. Shortly after arriving, five sisters traveled across the Congo River to Brazzaville to consult the Sisters of St.  Joseph of Cluny regarding how to begin their mission with Congolese families. Returning to Kimwenza, Sisters of Notre Dame began working with seventy girls and forty boys who arrived in caravans from different regions of the country, many weak and ill from the long march.35 Surrounded by unfamiliar languages, the sisters began to learn the local vernacular Kikongo from the founder of the mission, Fr. Van Hencxthoven. Sr. Théophanie proved a particularly adept student. In 1896, five more sisters arrived from Namur and the community established a second mission in Ndembo, where they taught 150 students. When sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease carried by the sub-Saharan tsetse fly, began to spread across the region, the local population was devastated and many residents of the missions died. Because securing supplies for the children was becoming increasingly difficult in both Kimwenza and Ndembo, Jesuits encouraged the Sisters of Notre Dame to relocate to Kisantu. In 1900, the community left Kimwenza and Ndembo to found a new mission in Kisantu along the Matadi-Kinshasa railroad. Sleeping sickness had overtaken this area as well, and the sisters devoted themselves to caring for the sick, visiting surrounding villages, and preparing catechumens for baptism.36 In 1905, four Sisters of Notre Dame traveled thirty kilometers south of Kisantu to establish a mission in Lemfu, where there was already a strong Jesuit presence. The following year, Jesuits built a leprosarium in Kisantu

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Figure 2.2. “The Vision of Compiègne” by Sr. Janet Mullen

where they rehabilitated children through screening, diet, and treatment with atoxyl. Sisters assisted Br. Van den Bosch and Fr. Van de Ryst in caring for victims of sleeping sickness as they continued their work teaching religion and health. The epidemic ended in 1915, and the sisters returned to their traditional mission of education, focusing on religious instruc-

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tion and marriage preparation along with problems related to nutrition and infant mortality. Each year the mission offered an annual retreat, alternating between men and women. According to the community’s diary, 215 women participated in the 1915 retreat.37 While the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur were establishing their first missions in the Congo Free State, the rubber trade in the colony reached its peak (1893–1913) and the discovery of gold (1895) brought new industry to the region. Adam Hochschild vividly recounts the economic exploitation and human suffering perpetrated by King Leopold II in the Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908. As the monarch extracted ivory, rubber, and gold from the colony, he built a forced-labor system that effectively enslaved Congolese men, women, and children. The bloody European quest for ivory was most famously captured in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel, The Heart of Darkness. Although often interpreted beyond its specific location and historical context, the tale is based on the six months Conrad spent as a steamboat officer in Congo in 1890. He arrived in the colony believing in Leopold’s civilizing mission but was horrified by the greed he witnessed among white men and left with an altered view of humanity.38 By the end of the nineteenth century, a number of foreign observers were calling attention to Leopold’s abuses. Like Conrad, many of the regime’s most effective critics were mobilized by their own participation in the international commerce brutally stripping the territory of its rich natural resources. Edmund Dene Morel first began to note the discrepancies between imports and exports to Congo while working for a Liverpool-based shipping line. Initially concerned by the number of arms being imported to the region, E. D. Morel realized how little Congolese were receiving in return for their labor and lucrative exports. Comparing the system to slavery, he soon joined forces with the Irish-born Roger Casement, who had worked for Henry Morton Stanley and the African International Association in Congo in 1884 before joining the British Colonial Service. A quick student of local languages and a friend of Joseph Conrad, Casement was commissioned to interview people throughout the upper Congo basin about the humanitarian situation in the Belgian colony while stationed in Boma. In 1904, he presented his findings to the British Crown in what became known as the Casement Report. Galvanized by growing public recognition of Leopold’s abuses, E. D. Morel, Roger Casement, and the Irish Protestant missionary Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness founded the Congo Reform Association that same year. The Congo Reform Association launched what Hochschild argues was the most influential human rights campaign of its time. In addition to

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members’ own personal experiences and in-depth research, the association relied on Swedish and American Protestant missionaries to provide eyewitness accounts and gather photographic evidence of violence in the region. Presbyterian William Sheppard, the first black American missionary in Congo, documented one of the most notorious practices of the colonial administration. Soldiers in the Force Publique, an army of African mercenaries King Leopold II organized for his new state in 1888, were cutting off the hands of Congolese who had been killed for resisting forced labor.39 Administration officials expected to receive a severed hand for every bullet issued. Raising the visibility of atrocities committed against the local population, the Congo Reform Association quickly captured the literary imaginations of influential writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain who were moved to write about the cruelty of King Leopold II.40 In the United States, Morel argued persuasively that Americans had a special responsibility to end the monarch’s violent rule because their country was the first to legitimize his claim to Congo. As the movement succeeded in turning popular opinion against King Leopold II in both England and the United States, the Belgian monarch faced increasing international pressure to give up control of the colony. Back at home, members of the Belgian Parliament insisted Leopold set up an independent commission of inquiry. In 1908, King Leopold II escaped mounting opposition to his regime by orchestrating the sale of the colony to Belgium. Now under government control, many of the most repressive practices remained intact. Belgian administrators continued to require local chiefs to provide laborers and supplied chains and metal yokes that would ensure compliance. Armed police working for the mines used chicottes, whips made from hippo hides with razor-sharp edges, to discipline workers. Conditions improved slightly when the colonial government turned control of northeastern gold mines over to private corporations. Congolese began to pay taxes to the Belgian government, and the need to earn money gradually replaced coercion, turning subsistence farmers into miners and industrial workers. As Belgians invested in the gold mines, they realized that the industry would produce more if workers were well fed, healthy, and literate, although mining town schools only provided the equivalent of an eighth-grade education.41 Decades of physical, sexual, and economic violence committed against the Congolese took a devastating toll on the population. The forced labor system tore apart villages and communities as men were forced to tap rubber and few adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. Local populations became more vulnerable to famine and disease, and birth rates

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steadily declined. Although it is difficult to be precise because of poor data, demographers approximate that between 1880 and 1920 the local population decreased by almost 50 percent, from forty million to twenty million.42 Estimates of how many million people were murdered during King Leopold’s rule have proved more controversial, provoking heated debate among writers, historians, and biographers.43 The silence among Belgian Catholic missionaries in the face of this suffering was deafening. Regional scholar Thomas Turner describes the powerful overlapping interests of the state, missionaries, and private industry under Belgian rule as a trinité coloniale.44 Although church leaders criticized the Belgian colonial state for not recognizing the authority and traditional legitimacy of Congolese leaders, members of both the church and government presumed their cultural superiority in deciding which local customs and institutions should be preserved. Missionaries attempted to selectively change local practices, such as polygamy, that undermined their evangelization efforts in the region.45 There was some public outcry among Catholic missionaries after the publication of the Belgian Parliament’s Commission of Enquiry (1904–5), which confirmed reports of abuse and forced labor, but it was quickly silenced by Leopold’s 1906 concordat with the Vatican. Under this agreement, schools operated by Belgian Catholic missionaries were guaranteed generous state subsidies and missions received one hundred to two hundred hectares of land to be held in perpetuity.46 Belgium’s annexation of the “Belgian Congo” in 1908 was unpopular among its citizens, placing Catholic missionaries in an even stronger position. With relative economic prosperity at home and bitter internal political divisions between the Flemish and Walloon populations, the colony received only a small group of Belgian immigrants. Unlike Great Britain and France, there were few serious debates regarding colonial questions in the country until the middle of the twentieth century, and most colonial matters fell under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Ministry, which was dominated by the Catholic Party.47

Women of African Descent in the Catholic Church As Sisters of Notre Dame worked with Jesuits to evangelize the Congolese population in the first decades of the twentieth century, they taught women and girls across all stages of the life course, from birth to marriage and into old age. Between 1920 and 1932, the Sisters of Notre Dame in the Belgian Congo established missions in Wombali (1920–30), Djuma (1924– 34), Ngidinga (1928), Beno (1931–32), and Mpese (1932), the site of a

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second dispensary hospital. The ongoing educational and evangelization endeavors of the Sisters of Notre Dame across these missions took place within the context of a Catholic monopoly over the colonial educational system. Protestants operated a comparable number of mission schools in the 1920s, running 2,913 village schools with 82,000 students compared to the 2,532 Catholic village schools with an enrollment of 95,000 students. However, the general educational reform in Congo, implemented in 1925 and 1926, only provided state subsidies to missions nationales, which included exclusively Catholic missions because there were not any Belgian Protestant missionaries in the colony.48 During this period Congolese women began to express their interest in becoming sisters. They embarked on a long struggle to convince Belgian missionaries they were sincere in their religious intentions before being segregated into separate diocesan religious orders formed solely for African women. Congolese women’s exclusion from international religious orders until the middle of the twentieth century reflects the wider racial and ethnic barriers confronting Catholic women of African descent throughout the global church. This religious apartheid is also apparent in the regional histories of Sisters of Notre Dame provinces across the United States. When Sisters of Notre Dame settled in Cincinnati, they welcomed local women into the congregation, but those who entered were either white immigrant or USborn women. The first US Sister of Notre Dame, Sr. Marie Joséphine Link, professed her first vows at the Sixth Street Convent in 1843 and her perpetual vows in 1844.49 Of the 476 women who entered the novitiate between 1841 and 1870, most were born in Ireland (215), the United States (153), or Germany (76). There were smaller numbers of young women from Canada, France, England, Prussia, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Holland, the Netherlands, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Scotland, Switzerland, and the Isle of Jersey.50 When the young Cincinnati community began a convert-outreach program in 1844, Sisters of Notre Dame focused on evangelizing the city’s African American residents. Hoping to bring more black families to the Catholic faith, sisters Francis Regis and Marie Monica began teaching at one of the only African American parishes in the country in 1866 but did not consider preparing black girls for religious sisterhood.51 Similar to the Belgian Congo, most black women who became Catholic sisters in the United States entered segregated orders. The first permanent community of black sisters, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, was founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, and the historically Afro-Creole Sisters of the Holy Family (SFF) was founded in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1842.52 Although at least

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thirty-six US-born, African-descended women entered historically white congregations in the United States, England, Canada, Italy, and France before the turn of the twentieth century, many were free women of color who could pass for white.53 Most were deliberately written out of the histories of their orders, and it was not until after World War II that white communities of sisters in the United States began to openly but reluctantly accept women of African descent. “Why Can’t I?” The First Congolese Vocations When Congolese women at the missions in Wombali and Lemfu began to ask Sisters of Notre Dame directly about entering religious life during the 1920s, male religious orders in Congo were already training local men for the priesthood. The first Congolese priest was ordained in 1917.54 Two years later Pope Benedict XV issued the encyclical Maximum Illud, asking missionaries to focus their efforts on preparing local clergy in all mission countries, anticipating that the future of missions around the world would depend on the strength and de-Europeanization of local churches: The Catholic Church is not an intruder in any country; nor is she alien to any people. It is only right, then, that those who exercise her sacred ministry should come from every nation, so that their countrymen can look to them for instruction in the law of God and leadership on the way to salvation. Wherever the local clergy exist in sufficient numbers, and are suitably trained and worthy of their holy vocation, there you can justly assume that the work of the missionary has been successful and that the Church has laid her foundations well. And if, after these foundations have been laid and these roots sunk, a persecution should be raised to dislodge her, there need be no reason to fear that she could not withstand the blow.55

With this papal mandate, the Society of Jesus established a minor seminary in Lemfu in 1922 and a major one in Mayidi in 1933, ordaining three Congolese priests for the Kisantu Diocese in 1931.56 In 1922, as a group of boys at the Wombali mission left to attend the minor seminary in Lemfu, a young Congolese woman asked the Sisters of Notre Dame, “Why can’t I?”57 As recounted by Sr.  Marie Angèle Kitewo, Maria Lwata first arrived at the Jesuit mission in the Bandundu territorial province with a group of Congolese trying to escape the harassment of soldiers and colonial administrators. Childless and widowed for the second time in Wombali, Lwata was encouraged by Jesuits to begin working with

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other women in the mission. When the Sisters of Notre Dame settled in Wombali, Lwata was already helping run a boarding school for women and young girls. Lwata began instructing sisters in the local language as they taught her to read and write.58 In response to Marie Lwata’s request, the Sisters of Notre Dame consulted Monsignor De Vos, the apostolic prefect of Kwango, who began to explore the possibility of vocations among Congolese women. Back in Namur, Mo. Maria Julienne Goffin, the ninth superior general of the congregation, decided to send a sister delegate to the Belgian Congo in 1925 to  study the question of local vocations with Monsignor De Vos. Sisters began preparations for the establishment of an autonomous African congregation in Lemfu, and at the age of fifty, Maria Lwata received a religious name and habit.59 Still, the question of a Congolese Catholic sisterhood remained unsettled. The first Congolese postulants and novices encountered obstacles at every turn. They had difficulty convincing European sisters and clergy— not to mention their own families and communities—that they should become sisters. In a region where women had traditionally achieved their social value through motherhood and giving life to future generations, many perceived the celibate lifestyle of a sister as a rejection of Kongolese womanhood. According to the traditional culture of the Kongo people, a woman’s primary responsibility is to bear children to produce “riches in human beings” (mbongo bantu) for the clan (kanda) or to “repair the clan” (londa kanda).60 The voluntary refusal of motherhood was considered “a scandal” because it betrayed these fundamental social, cultural, and religious values.61 After overcoming this opposition and entering the emergent community, young women from Mpese, Lemfu, Kikwit, and Kisantu struggled to live interculturally, negotiating ethnic and regional differences in their lives together. Amid these challenges, the Sisters of Notre Dame responsible for the formation of the young women proved unprepared to provide leadership. They did not live in community with the young novices and lacked a basic understanding of Bantu culture.62 Initial attempts to train communities of young women for religious life in Lemfu and Djuma during the late 1920s and 1930s ultimately failed, and only Lwata persevered as the first Congolese woman to make religious vows under the direction of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She pronounced her first vows in 1927, living alone near the sisters until her death in 1938, working with orphans, caring for the sick, teaching catechumens, and assisting with religious instruction.63

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In 1939, five girls studying at the small Notre Dame école normale in Lemfu once again expressed the desire to become sisters to Bishop Alphonse Verwimp, SJ, apostolic vicar of Kisantu.64 Although he had disbanded a previous group of women in 1931, Verwimp decided to construct a novitiate four hundred meters from the convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Lemfu. Under Verwimp’s leadership, the Sisters of Notre Dame took responsibility for the formation of a new diocesan congregation in 1942, the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu. Because the bishop prohibited the Sisters of Notre Dame from teaching novices French, they began instructing the young aspirants in Kikongo. Most of the women who entered during this period were second-generation Christians whose families were more familiar with the early missionaries than the surrounding population.65 Still, communicating fundamental concepts of religious life into a new language and cultural setting was challenging for the Belgian sisters. They struggled to find suitable vocabulary, appropriating bumwense for the vow of celibacy, “derived from the Kongo word for maiden and the prefix bu- which indicated a quality or state of being.” For the vow of poverty, sisters used the word bumputu from the Kikongo word for “poor,” which expressed only a negative sense of the word rather than the sharing of communal resources. This newly formed diocesan order, which still exists today, would play a critical role in opening the doors of the Sisters of Notre Dame to local women.66 As Sisters of Notre Dame renewed their efforts to prepare Congolese women for religious life, tensions around higher education began to threaten the rapport between Belgian Catholic missionaries and the colonial government. After a mutiny within the Force Publique in 1944, influential Belgian missionaries like Fr. Van Wing, SJ, drew attention to Congolese demands for reform, advocating for the extension of secondary and university education to Congolese students. Three years later, the Society of Jesus organized the Centre universitaire congolais Lovanium (CUCL) in Kisantu, a group of three technical schools. This included a school for medical assistants, another for agricultural assistants, and the more controversial school of administrative science, which was perceived as a threat to the status of white Belgians.67 Due in part to the efforts of Fr. Van Wing and other missionaries, the state introduced a new educational program in 1948 that offered secondary education and promised university education in the future. However, church initiatives to promote education and training for Congolese laity and establish regional institutions of higher education continued to be met with resistance from colonial administrators.68 Because Congolese were prohibited from studying abroad at universi-

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ties until the 1950s, Catholic mission schools became an important site for political development as well as religious formation. Early Congolese political movements had deep ties to the Catholic Church. Seminaries provided the only pathway to higher education in the Belgian Congo, and some local men who had no intention of entering the priesthood were educated there. Along with a growing number of Congolese clergy, former seminarians and graduates of Catholic technical schools formed the basis for an educated Congolese middle class, often referred to as évolués, in which the religious and political identities of the Congolese elite overlapped in complicated ways.69 Among Belgian missionaries who supported the growing Congolese independence movement, many identified strongly with the peoples and regions where they worked. Promoting a strong sense of ethnic identity, some projected their own Flemish nationalism onto the local context rather than encouraging a more unified expression of Congolese nationalism. Along with other Jesuit missionaries, Fr. Van Wing helped found the Alliance Bakongo (ABAKO), a prominent cultural organization representing the largest ethnic group in the region, the Bakongo, who are defined primarily as Bantu people who speak Kikongo. Although ABAKO became explicitly political by 1955 and broke with its Catholic roots before independence, early membership included several Congolese clergy. Under the leadership of Joseph Kasavubu, who would become the first president of the Republic of Congo, ABAKO developed into one of the most important political organizations in Congo.70 After decades of tension around Catholic educational efforts in Congo, church leaders came into direct conflict with the Belgian administration in 1956. The crisis in mission-state relations was sparked by state challenges to the Catholic monopoly over education in the colony under the leadership of Auguste Buisseret, minister of colonies from 1953 to 1958. Buisseret’s promotion of secular education and the subsequent disillusionment of the church hierarchy provided an opportunity for missionaries who were more sympathetic to Congolese nationalism to exert greater influence.71 In the past, the colonial government pacified its Catholic critics with generous financial support. Now faced with the reduction of state subsidies for Catholic education, missionaries turned to laypeople for support. In 1952, the church included more than two hundred Congolese clergy while the colonial state remained a European apparatus increasingly at odds with the local population. By 1959, the Vatican had formally established a national church hierarchy in the Belgian Congo.72

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Preparing for Independence Belgian sisters were less involved in the Congolese struggle for independence than their male counterparts, but it is clear from archival records that Sisters of Notre Dame knew the place of missionaries in the colony was shifting. By 1955, there were 870 African sisters across the three Belgian colonies of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, most members of diocesan orders. In April 1956, the community met to discuss whether the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu should become an autonomous congregation independent of Notre Dame’s oversight. In the minutes from the April meeting, the assistant to the provincial superior observed, “At the session on colonial studies in Brussels last March, it was affirmed that the blacks will not put up much longer with the paternalism of the Europeans. The missionaries’ role, therefore, is to be envisaged in the sense of the gospel saying: ‘He must grow and I must diminish,’ while continuing to help them, to give them responsibilities.”73 At the meeting, sisters discussed the possibility of assimilating the diocesan order into the Sisters of Notre Dame and accepting Congolese members into the congregation. While the debate continued, there were some Belgian sisters open to the possibility of local women becoming Sisters of Notre Dame at this juncture. Two months later, Catholic bishops made a public declaration supporting the rights of Congolese citizens to participate in the public affairs of their country.74 Within days, a group of Catholic évolués who would later form their own political party, the Mouvement national Congolais, issued the Manifeste de conscience africaine. ABAKO responded to this moderate call for political autonomy with a bolder manifesto on August 23, 1956, demanding immediate emancipation from Belgium.75 Many scholars trace the beginning of the Congolese independence struggle to this declaration. As Congolese nationalist movements gained strength and legitimacy, most Catholic missionaries aligned themselves with the local population and abandoned the sinking colonial ship. Within the Sisters of Notre Dame, there was uncertainty regarding how to respond to these rapidly changing state of affairs. In the fall of 1957, the Belgian provincial superior, Sr. Marie-Julie de la Croix, wrote to the community in Kimwenza. Congolese sisters were asking to be admitted into the congregation, and she would travel to the colony to speak with them directly. Having spent almost thirty years as a missionary in Congo herself, Sr. Marie-Julie de la Croix warned Belgian sisters during her visit that they should avoid disrespectful or condescending attitudes in their relation-

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ship with Congolese sisters. She also asked them to specifically avoid terms that could create more distance between them such as petite Soeur, Soeur noire, or Soeur indigène.76 Meanwhile, Bishop Verwimp asked members of the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu to write him regarding whether they wished to remain in the diocesan order or transfer to an international congregation. After presenting his findings to the papal delegate in Congo, he was advised not to take any action because transfers out of the Soeurs de Sainte Marie could potentially destabilize the young congregation. In October 1958, the superior general of the Sisters of Notre Dame, Mo. Saint-Joseph, visited Congo to consider the situation. Following the leader’s visit, the decision was made to establish a novitiate for local women to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame. In December, Sr. Marie-Julie de la Croix once again wrote to sisters in the colony. Although her correspondence reiterated that the community should be sensitive to the feelings of Congolese sisters, her words betray the paternalism of the Belgian Congolese colonial relationship: The blacks are becoming more and more difficult; it’s the same with every colony as it evolves and works towards its autonomy.  .  .  . You will need, and how I admire you, much more self-sacrifice and patience still for several years.  .  .  . And your attitude must be to put up with it all. No reproaches in public for the Congolese Sisters, no sharp rebukes, no hurtful comparisons . . . [because] one ill-spoken word . . . could compromise a good, the fruit of so much labour and sacrifice. . . . If there were ever any among you who did not feel disposed to make this effort, it would be better for them to ask not to stay in the mission.77

Sr.  Marie-Julie de la Croix’s counsel also reflected the growing awareness among Catholic missionaries that the days of the Belgian colony were numbered and that all eyes were upon them as they planned for the future. Any missteps could compromise the status of the Catholic Church in Congo. In 1959, after sixty-five years in a colony now on the brink of independence, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur opened a novitiate in Kisantu and accepted Sr.  Marie Gonzague Mbala as their first novice. According to Congolese sisters, “The year of 1959 was God’s time, for the Sisters of Notre Dame were then willing and reasonably ready to welcome Africans into their midst.”78 At the beginning of April, a Belgian sister recorded that a novice and three postulants were received into the new novitiate.79 A final decision regarding the future of the religious order in Congo had been

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Figure 2.3. Convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Kisantu, Democratic Republic of Congo

reached, but the tumultuous events of the next decades would reveal that many Belgian missionaries were not fully prepared to accept black sisters as equal members within the congregation. The political upheaval surrounding the congregation on the eve of independence only magnified thinly veiled tensions within the community. The four young Congolese women who entered the order at the peak of the independence movement endured contempt from outside the novitiate and distrust from within it. Sr. Marie Gonzague Mbala, the first novice, recalled the impossible situation in which these young women found themselves: From the beginning of our existence in the bosom of the Notre Dame Congregation we have lived moments of great anguish because of the troubles and the events in the country which have shaken even our peaceful region of Lower Zaïre. What above all made us suffer was that everyone was showing a certain disdain for the whites and, by that very face, we who had entered a European congregation were likewise scorned. At a certain moment we began to feel distrust on the part of our own [Belgian] Sisters who were begin-

48 / Chapter Two ning to question themselves on what would be the outcome of the work which they had newly begun.80

When so many Congolese were trying to break free of Belgian control, some local observers interpreted the decision to join a European religious congregation as a betrayal of nationalist aspirations. After entering the convent, these same young women came face-to-face with the painful ethnocentrism of the Belgian sisters, who expected them to adopt European mentalities, leadership styles, attitudes, habits, diets, and ways of dress.81 Congo achieved independence on June 30, 1960, after months of violent protest.  Independence triggered a mass exodus of ten thousand Europeans from the former colony, including Belgian officials, civil servants, and company personnel.82 As recounted by sociologist Renée Fox, the skies over Léopoldville (Kinshasa) and Brussels filled with planes carrying Belgians home from Congo for months. During the seventy-five years of imperial rule, Belgians had implanted many attitudes, values, customs, and beliefs in Congolese society, and the vast colony had provided the small European country with an “existential as well as a geographical frontier.”83 A month after independence, revolts broke out across different regions of the Republic of Congo, and newly elected national leaders quickly came into conflict with one another. In Kisantu, armed soldiers ransacked the Notre Dame convent, and the Congolese members did their best to convince the soldiers that the Belgian sisters were their friends.84 As the danger grew, Monsignor Pierre Kimbondo evacuated missionary sisters to the district of Kalina (now Gombe) in Léopoldville, where they took shelter in the convent of the Religious of the Sacred Heart. The Congolese novices and postulants followed, and the Sisters of Notre Dame left their missions in Kisantu, Lemfu, Ngidinga, and Mpese under the care of the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu. Sr. Marie Gonzague and the young postulants questioned their future: Some of our [Belgian] sisters left, and there was a question that all sisters would go if the revolution didn’t stop.  .  .  . There was no question of our accompanying our sisters to Belgium, for the situation was such that blacks living in that country were literally tortured by whites. We felt torn. On the one hand was regret that our Sisters were leaving without us, and we were afraid we would lose our vocations. On the other hand, we were fearful that we would die in Belgium if we did accompany them. All of this caused tremendous anxiety to our families.85

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Amid this chaos, the permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See in Congo, the Apostolic Nuncio, intervened to stop the exodus of missionaries from the newly independent country. By August, the Sisters of Notre Dame returned to Kisantu. Although the Republic of Congo had officially gained its independence, Belgium continued to intervene in the affairs of the young country during its first months of existence. When Congolese troops mutinied against the remaining vestiges of the white officer corps and threatened the European population, Belgium sent soldiers to respond. Belgium also provided support to Moïse Tshombe, the leader of a secession movement in the mineralrich southern province of Katanga. The first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, quickly came into conflict with the United Nations peacekeeping mission for its failure to expel Belgian troops and end the secession. Lumumba was a young charismatic pan-African nationalist and leader of the Mouvement national Congolais (MNC), the only party in parliament with a national rather than ethnic or regional platform. After appealing to several Western powers, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for assistance, triggering Cold War fears in the West and alarming President Joseph Kasavubu of the ABAKO party.86 Observing these postindependence conflicts, US president Eisenhower made the decision to involve the Central Intelligence Agency. In August 1960, CIA director Allen Dulles sent a cable to Léopoldville explicitly stating that Lumumba’s political removal was an “urgent and prime objective.” Although President Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba in early September, the prime minister refused to step down. With the backing of the CIA, the young army chief General Joseph Desiré Mobutu orchestrated the first of two bloodless government coups. After seizing power, Mobutu suspended parliament and the constitution, but Kasavubu remained as president. Encouraged by Western powers to avoid reconciliation with Lumumba, Mobutu placed the prime minister under house arrest and protection by UN troops. After Lumumba escaped, Mobutu’s soldiers captured and transferred him to Katanga, where secession leaders had already vowed to murder him. Lumumba was executed in Katanga as struggles for control of the new government intensified. Following general elections in March 1965, Mobutu would seize control of the government again, this time consolidating power under a one-party, one-man dictatorship that lasted thirty-two years (1965–97).87 In 1961, a small internal coup d’état was brewing within the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu as well. As young local women continued to enter

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the diocesan order and learn the story of Julie Billiart, some felt called to join the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, but Bishop Verwimp continued to refuse all transfer requests. When Belgian provincial Sr.  Marie-Julie de la Croix visited Congo in May 1961, she announced the Soeurs de Sainte Marie would become an autonomous order independent of the Sisters of Notre Dame. At the same time, she reinforced Verwimp’s earlier prohibition against sisters transferring to other congregations.88 Shortly after Sr. Marie-Julie de la Croix’s visit, the relationship between the Sisters of Notre Dame and the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu took an unexpected turn. On June 24, 1961, Monsignor Pierre Kimbondo replaced Verwimp as bishop of Kisantu. Monsignor Kimbondo had been consecrated as the first Congolese auxiliary bishop in 1956, and initially, it seemed as if he would uphold his predecessor’s decision regarding transfers between congregations. However, on August 10, 1961, while the Soeurs de Sainte Marie were on retreat, Kimbondo gathered the community together. He asked each sister, including postulants and novices, to choose for herself the congregation she would like to join. These unusual events were recorded with surprise in the annals of the Lemfu community: A very great event in the history of the Sisters of St. Marie! . . . They were deep in retreat.  .  .  . The Sisters having no warning [of what was coming], Msgr Kimbondo enters the chapel. He is wearing all his episcopal robes and insignia. . . . The Veni Creator [Come Creator Spirit] is sung. Then all the Sisters, including the novices and postulants, make their way into the large dining hall.  .  .  . Msgr solemnly tells them to choose the Congregation each one wants! Eight say they want the Sisters of Notre Dame (a desire which certain ones among them had been expressing for many years), one for the Religious of the Sacred Heart, and all the others for the Sisters of St.  Marie of Kisantu. The decision is then made to undertake immediately the complete separation: the pro–Notre Dame sisters can continue with their retreat, but they separate for meals.89

There was little if any church precedent for the actions undertaken by Bishop Kimbondo, and not much is known about his apparent change of heart. He acted without first consulting the Sisters of Notre Dame or their leaders in Namur, and his handling of the situation ran contrary to canon law. Shocked by what had taken place, Belgian sisters described it as un coup de théâtre, a sudden dramatic turn of events.90 Unsure how to proceed, the local community consulted its superiors in Namur and Rome. The case was brought to the Vatican and by September, the eight Soeurs de Sainte

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Marie who told Kimbondo they wished to become Sisters of Notre Dame were accepted into the order. While Sr. Marie Gonzague Mbala was preparing to make her first vows, they began a second probationary novitiate for incorporation into the community. The transition between congregations was challenging for sisters from the Soeurs de Sainte Marie. Apart from the unusual circumstances of their entry, the eight sisters who transferred came from different backgrounds than the young women who entered directly into Notre Dame. Older and with less access to education during their youth because of Belgian colonial policies, they also had little experience living interculturally.91 Undergoing a “second” novitiate presented its own challenges because these women had previous experiences with religious life and were already familiar with many of its demands.92 Despite such differences, the first cohort of sisters who transferred marked the beginning of a pattern. Between 1961 and 1970, the majority of Congolese novices who entered Notre Dame began religious life within the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu. Women who entered from the Soeurs de Sainte Marie remember their early days in Notre Dame with ambivalence. Many were keenly aware that some of the white sisters did not accept the presence of black women in their ranks. When I spoke with Sr. Inès, she reflected on these circumstances without pretense: “If I speak of Belgium, the sisters in the beginning did not like the blacks a lot. I can say that. In the beginning, the sisters did not like the blacks a lot. When we found out that the sisters did not like us, we were not happy, and the opening up [warming up] was not what it should be.” Congolese sisters remember the Belgian mistress of novices as a hard person who told them that members of the community were threatening to leave if black women entered. Sr. Inès recalled these divisions candidly: “There were those who did not love us; there were those who loved us.” According to Sr. Inès, the situation in the novitiate deteriorated during periods of unrest in the country. As a group of Belgian sisters prepared to return to Namur, the mistress of novices approached the provincial about sending the Congolese sisters home. Belgian sisters began to ask the older novices to return to their families or rejoin the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu. Reflecting the ongoing tensions between the different unequally situated groups of sisters, the community decided that if they left the region, they would only take one Congolese sister with them to Belgium, Sr.  Marie Gonzague Mbala. Refusing to follow these instructions, all the novices ultimately remained in Kisantu together. Despite the opposition and resentment they encountered, Sr. Inès and the other novices “did not lose courage.” They were determined to prove to the community that they

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had vocations as Sisters of Notre Dame and persisted until pronouncing their vows. The Birth of the Congo-Kinshasa Province The colonial mentality of missionary sisters described by Sr. Inès endured long after the struggle for Congolese independence ended. In the early 1960s, many local women entered the Notre Dame novitiate and many left. The burden of adaptation within a European community was always placed on the shoulders of Congolese sisters who, as Sr.  Marie Angèle Kitewo explained, “lived without voice” in the congregation.93 Sisters of Notre Dame ate Belgian food at mealtimes, wore European religious habits, and were accountable to white leaders. Some of the missionary sisters who opposed black sisters grew accustomed to their presence, while others eventually returned to Belgium. It would take a wider shift in the global structure and orientation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and the Catholic Church for Congolese sisters to gain full independence from the Belgian Province. By the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Sisters of Notre Dame were beginning to reconsider the traditional missionary approach that facilitated the flow of resources between countries in the Global North and Global South. Under US leadership and the directives of Vatican II, the order made its first steps toward developing a more transnational structure that enabled multidirectional relationships between sisters in different places. In 1963, Mo. Loretto Julia became the first non-European and USborn superior general of the congregation. While guiding the congregation through the renewal process called for by Vatican II, she began recruiting missionaries for Congo throughout the world rather than only in Belgium. This signified an important shift in thinking and a fissure in the unilateral relationship between countries that had historically sent and received missionaries. During a visit from a member of the international leadership team in 1967, fufu and other local Congolese food staples were finally introduced into convent meals. Congolese sisters began to take on more leadership roles as directresses of schools, superiors of communities, and administrators of dispensaries and health centers.94 In 1968, the Sisters of Notre Dame returned to Kimwenza to open the offices of the vice province, novitiate, and juniorate. Kimwenza’s proximity to Kinshasa offered sisters a greater number of opportunities to pursue higher education and recruit well-trained theology professors to teach novices. Sr. Emily Mullen, the first American missionary to Congo, arrived in 1969.

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Figure 2.4. Depiction of Mary at the Manresa Retreat Center in Kimwenza, Democratic Republic of Congo

Outside the convent, national politics also shaped the trajectory of the vice province. Mobutu’s coup d’état in 1965 was initially welcomed by the Catholic Church and much of civil society because it put an end to the rebellions and secessions dividing the country. Within two years, however,  Mobutu had centralized the administration of the country and

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established his political party, the Mouvement populaire de la Révolution (MPR), as its only governing institution, publicly hanging members of the opposition. Tensions between the church and state grew as President Mobutu embarked on his campaign of authenticité or “Zairianization” in 1971. With the goal of overcoming the last vestiges of colonialism, Mobutu outlawed the use of Christian names, banned religious radio and television programs, and forbid all Western or “foreign” clothing. Men were required to wear Mao-style tunics known as an “abacost,” shorthand for à bas le costume, or “down with the suit.” Léopoldville became Kinshasa, Elisabethville became Lubumbashi, and Stanleyville became Kisangani. In October 1971, Mobutu renamed the country Zaire and christened himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, roughly translated as “the earthy, the peppery all-powerful warrior who, by his endurance and will to win, goes from contest to contest leaving fire in his wake.”95 In response to authenticité, Joseph Malula, the first Congolese cardinal, asked all women religious to abandon their religious habits for pagnes, the traditional African wrappers that Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame wear today.96 During Mobutu’s temporary nationalization of schools between 1974– 77, religious courses and Christian movements throughout the country were suppressed. Following the instructions of local bishops, Sisters of Notre Dame briefly abandoned the direction of their schools and many missionaries returned to Belgium. Congolese bishops released a number of statements criticizing Mobutu’s dictatorship in response to these policies. Some individual members of the Catholic hierarchy spoke out publicly against the regime, and Cardinal Malula was driven into brief exile for vocalizing his opposition. Despite these efforts, personal, ethnic, and ecclesiastic divisions between bishops often compromised the church’s ability to offer a strong and consistent critique of the regime.97 Although Mobutu’s regime was eventually consumed by kleptocracy, his efforts to overcome regionalism by minimizing ethnic divisions and promoting a cultural renaissance also helped forge a more unified sense of Congolese national identity and pride during this period.98 In 1975, Sr. Elizabeth Marie Mbwanga was elected as the first Congolese leader of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Zaire. This event set into motion a number of historic shifts, forging the way for local leadership. Sr. Elizabeth Marie Mbwanga and Sr.  Thérèse Van de Borne represented the region at the 1975 general chapter of the congregation in Rome, where it was decided that Zaire, which had been operating as a “vice province,” would

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become independent. Sr. Dorothy, who traveled to Rome for the 1975 general chapter, followed this turn of events closely after being elected to serve on the general leadership council under British Superior General Mary Linscott. When the US sister Mary Daniel Turner became superior general three years later, she introduced a team form of government into the congregation, and Sr.  Dorothy was reelected to serve a six-year term on this first general government group. With the opportunity to visit every province within the congregation during her nine years of international leadership, Sr.  Dorothy observed firsthand how Vatican II renewals shaped the lives of sisters around the globe. Encouraged by the leadership of Superior General Mary Daniel Turner, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur began to develop lifestyles and practices that were more consistent with their local contexts. Sr.  Dorothy explained, She [Mary Daniel Turner] had a very forward sense that these missions should be developed according to their own culture. For example, she had served in Japan, and when [renewal] came, all of a sudden it was decided that sisters should be free to pray in Japanese, and they should have a Japanese menu, and they should operate like Japanese women. The same thing happened in the Congo but was slower there because the Belgians held a tight hold. But people really did credit her with kind of breaking through that culture. And to a certain extent, it happened in the United States too. Renewal developed here in the United States very differently than it did in Belgium, and to this day it is still different.  .  .  . American sisters became Americanized during the renewal process. . . . Before renewal, we were always trying to be faithful to the motherhouse.

As we sat together drinking coffee in the living room of the house where she resides with five other sisters in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Sr.  Dorothy, age eighty-seven, spoke more freely about these developments than many of the Congolese sisters I met. “When the transition came, it was very gingerly,” she observed. Belgian sisters had determined the “internal culture” of the community from its inception, controlling everything from formation practices to the language of prayers and daily convent life. Now they were slowly ceding control of the new province, which had been completely dependent on Belgium for resources since missionaries first arrived in the region. “Just talking to them [the Congolese sisters],” she remembered, “it was like another independence.”99

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Conclusions Prior to Vatican II, there was limited recognition among leaders of the Catholic Church that vowed religious life would be experienced or practiced differently depending on cultural or national context.100 While early missionaries adapted their lifestyles to the realities in which they found themselves, they retained a strong commitment to living according to the rules and constitutions of their orders. In fact, when religious congregations expanded to new places, there was often increased pressure to live in ways consistent with the roots of the order and to be faithful to its traditions. Like Sr. Dorothy, most Sisters of Notre Dame trace the localization of religious life to the Second Vatican Council. While Vatican II undoubtedly made way for the institutional changes that contemporary sisters describe as significant today, the Americanization and Zairianization of religious life has a longer history. In practice, Sisters of Notre Dame have been engaged in the localization of religious life since leaving Europe in 1840. Nevertheless, Vatican II and the new forms of global governance developing within the congregation emboldened local sisters to explicitly acknowledge, embrace, and encourage diverse expressions of religious life within the order rather than attempt to curb them. It also encouraged members to develop and imagine new relationships between themselves and sisters in other regions. In the next chapter, I explain how Vatican II broke apart some of the postimperial formations embedded within the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and opened up new institutional possibilities for Catholic sisters on the ground. I also describe the dramatically different religious lives of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the Democratic Republic of Congo and those in the United States, exploring the local and global factors that lead sisters to organize and orient their individual and communal practices differently. Although the Congo-Kinshasa Province gained its autonomy from Belgium in 1975, the struggle to transform the repressive ties between the two provinces continues. Some Congolese sisters still encounter colonial mentalities when they visit the motherhouse in Namur or meet Belgian sisters in their travels. As one US sister observed, “Some of the older sisters—not everyone—but some of the older sisters really still look on the Congolese as children. They pat them on the head, and they talk to them as if they are not responsible women. . . . [In Congo,] this sister is an administrator in a hospital. This sister is an administrator in a school, and this sister is parish administrator. And they are all younger than me . . . So we have really done a lot of conscious work to dispel that.” When I asked Sr. Colette, a Congo-

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lese sister who completed graduate studies in Europe, to describe relationships between sisters in different parts of the world, she reflected on her recent experiences with Belgian sisters. Forty-six years old and too young to have witnessed Belgian colonization first hand, Sr. Colette told me, “[It is] not easy, you know, with some sisters. Not easy.” When I questioned her further, Sr. Collette elaborated, “The colonization . . . they [Belgians] keep that spirit in their land. . . . That spirit is there. It is still there. Even when you go there they will remind you of things, bad things.” In the chapters that follow, I explore the extent to which Congolese and American sisters are still wrestling with the complicated colonial histories of their organization and the imperial spirit that first animated its worldwide expansion.

THREE

Like Night and Day Sisters’ Personal and Communal Religious Practices in Two Places

In the morning, I awake to an unfamiliar quiet and wonder why I do not hear noise in the hallway or singing from the small chapel below. I have only been at the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur provincial house in Kimwenza for a few days but am already growing accustomed to the weekday rituals. In the pale light just before sunrise, the morning begins with laudes, or morning prayer, in the chapel followed by Mass and a short quiet breakfast in the réfectoire. I usually return to my room by 7:30 a.m. to prepare for the rest of the day. In the evening, sisters gather once again in the chapel for vespers, or evening prayer. Although I have adapted to this rhythm of laudes, daily mass, and vespers, it is still a challenge for me to orient myself in the French lectionary as we move between the readings in Ordinary Time to the occasional Feast Days located in another section of the book. In addition to the lectionary outlining readings and prayers for the day, the community draws from several different hymnals throughout the Mass. Sisters sing some hymns in French and others in Kikongo, often accompanied by community members playing conga drums. As voices fill the chapel, I fumble through the books on the shelf of the pew in front of me and am very grateful for sisters Amélie and Ange, who occasionally hand me a lectionary opened to the correct page and take me aside afterward to locate me in the readings for the next day. After evening prayer, we all linger outside the chapel in the courtyard, waiting for the bell to chime before sisters file into the réfectoire for dinner, which also begins with prayer or song. Following dinner, I help clear dishes from the rows of tables that line each side of the long dining room or bring in the larger serving dishes and pots that hold the chicken, fish, beans, cooked vegetables, and fufu at evening meals. Between washing and drying dishes, utensils, pots, and pans in the corridor connecting the réfec-

Like Night and Day / 59

toire and the kitchen or setting the tables for breakfast the next morning, there is plenty to keep me busy. Recreation time begins after dinner, and some sisters sit on the outer edges of the courtyard talking, laughing, and teasing one another while others return to their room to rest or continue working. I usually join the small but faithful circle of women that congregate in the community room directly across the courtyard from the réfectoire to watch a French-dubbed Brazilian soap opera, Sauvée par l’amour, or catch segments of the national news. I quickly learn that the most devoted and vocal fan of the popular telenovela is the leader of the Congo-Kinshasa Province, who sits nearest the television and often, shaking her head, adds her own commentary and exclamations—“Ohhhhh,” “Noooo,” or “Cette femme!”—to the most dramatic moments of each episode. At night, as the lights from the bedrooms that line my hallway on the second floor of the convent begin to go dark, I set my small digital alarm clock for 5:45 a.m. so that I will wake up with enough time to get ready for Mass, which usually begins at 6:15 a.m. I often awaken to the sounds of sisters preparing for morning prayer even before I hear the gentle but persistent beep of my alarm. The walls separating my bedroom from the others are thin, and the one facing the hallway is low and stops a few feet before reaching the high ceiling above my head. The soft noises of sisters awakening in the dark pass easily through the open air above us, and the sounds of dogs barking, birds chirping, or sisters beginning laudes in the chapel drift through the open wooden slats of my window, which looks out onto the grassy courtyard below. Even though I have my own room with a single bed, small desk, sink, mirror, and closet, there is little privacy within the open architecture of the compound. When my neighbor’s mobile phone started vibrating on my first night in the convent, I was certain the noise was coming from within my own room. But this morning the quiet is different, and I soon realize why. I am already standing in front of the small mirror above the sink in my room, dressed, teeth brushed, and ready for Mass when I hear a sister trying to get my attention from the hallway. Peeking my head into the corridor I see Sr. Ange poised between the doors of our rooms. It is the first time I have seen Sr. Ange without a kitambala, and she appears younger with her closely cropped hair framing her face; it is different from the small short braids many of the younger sisters wear. Sr. Ange is clearly in a hurry and explains she has forgotten to tell me that there is not a priest available to celebrate Mass in the chapel this morning, so the community is going to another chapel. I should come with her. I nod, ready to leave, and she returns to her room for a minute to fasten her scarf before rushing down

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Figure 3.1. Courtyard of the provincial house in Kimwenza, Democratic Republic of Congo

the hall. I follow her with another tall, slender, and carefully dressed sister trailing behind us. We hurry through the tall rust-colored gate of the main compound on the path toward the novitiate house but then turn left through another door where we enter the courtyard of a neighboring religious community, the Josephites. I follow Sr. Ange into the Josephite’s chapel, where I see familiar rows of sisters sitting in the back pews, all with long, brightly colored pagnes wrapped around their waists and matching blouses with sleeves that puff gently at the shoulder. As the chapel fills, it becomes the sea of vivid colors and patterns that I am growing accustomed to seeing in the Notre Dame chapel every morning—brilliant oranges, neon greens, yellows, reds, and some softer blues, unified by the style of blouse and skirt. Every sister has wrapped her hair in a kitambala—some scarves are floral and others are spotted with designer logos from Chanel or Louis Vuitton. The Josephite chapel is bigger than Notre Dame’s, and instead of a plain narrow wooden cross behind the altar, a long thin Jesus carved from dark wood hangs on the cross. The crucifix is mounted on a wall painted with a vibrant geometric pattern, and a matching border lines the other walls of the church. When Sr. Ange motions for me to take my seat, I quickly find an open space beside

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a group of Sisters of Notre Dame. There is no lectionary in sight so I follow along with the responses for the mass as best I can without its guidance.

It is a sunny, clear April evening as I drive up a Somerville side street and park my car across from a large white house with black awnings. I doublecheck the street address as I walk toward the house and am reassured by a small metal plaque on the front door that reads “Sisters of Notre Dame.” A few minutes after I knock, Sr. Claudia, age fifty, opens the door and welcomes me into the spacious front room. Motioning to the white apron she has tied over her royal-blue cable-knit sweater and straight black kneelength skirt, she explains that it is her night to cook. Although she prepared the enchiladas ahead of time, she still has more to do. Sr.  Claudia and I have only spoken over the phone, but she does not hesitate or pause in her animated explanation of the day’s events as she leads me from the front room through the inner entry hall and small dining area to the kitchen at the back of the house. I follow her to the table at the center of the kitchen where she has set out vegetables to chop for a side salad. Knife in hand, Claudia talks to me casually about the other members of the community in Somerville—a city just northwest of Boston—and how they take turns doing the cooking and cleaning at different points in the week. Tonight it is her responsibility to prepare dinner and lead community prayer. Eventually, we both sit down and I begin to ask Sr. Claudia questions about how she first came to know the Sisters of Notre Dame. At some point in our conversation, another sister lets herself in through a door at the back of the kitchen, and we both realize we have lost track of time. Sr. Claudia stands up to warm the enchiladas in the oven. As she busies herself with a few final preparations, I introduce myself to the older sister, Ann, who has just entered. Together we dry and put away some of the clean dishes on the counter. Soon we are seated at the dining room table for dinner, and before we begin eating, Sr.  Claudia reads a short prayer from an interfaith book she told me she recently purchased. The food is delicious, enchiladas with white sauce, red rice, and a vegetable side dish. There are only three of us sharing the meal because the third community member, Sr. Tracy, is in Ipswich for an evening meeting and another member recently left on a long-term international mission. Still, conversation is animated. We talk about a range of topics from our favorite local grocery stores to family genealogy. I have just finished explaining my research to Sr. Ann when we hear a car pull up behind the house and the back door open. Sr. Tracy enters and introduces another sister, Jennifer, who is visit-

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ing from California. Originally from the Boston area, Sr. Jennifer now lives in Carmel where she recently became the only Sister of Notre Dame de Namur residing in the city. Jennifer jokes that she is her “own boss now,” except for the ten-year-old cat who lives with her. After everyone has dispersed, I talk with Sr.  Claudia a little longer at the kitchen table before she excuses herself to make copies from the same interfaith book, which she is also using for the community prayer that evening. I join Sr. Ann in the living room where she is sitting with her laptop open in front of her. As I enter, Ann closes the computer and begins fastforwarding through a few commercials on the television. As we wait for evening prayer, Sr. Ann explains the art pieces hanging on the walls of the living room. The colorful painting of a young African woman walking up a road and leaning forward under the weight of the bundled sticks on her back was painted by a sister and student of Sr. St. Vincent de Paul, one of the province’s great artists. Just before 8:30 p.m., Sr. Ann leads me upstairs to the community chapel, a small room that was formerly a bedroom. As I enter, I see two chairs resting against each of the three back walls and facing inward to where a small altar has been erected in the center of the room. An ornate tabernacle rests on top of a pedestal, draped artfully with a blue cloth. At the base of the pedestal, a blue candle burns brightly near a figure of a woman praying. Hanging on the wall directly behind the altar, a striking metalwork crucifix catches my eye, and I notice an icon of Mary to my right. Feeling suddenly timid, I pick up a copy of the prayer Sr.  Claudia has xeroxed and take a seat. The community begins by praying aloud before Sr. Claudia shares a series of readings that interweave Christian, Jewish, and Islamic themes. Claudia plays a short piece of music sung by a female vocalist as everyone in the room bows their heads to pray silently. After the song finishes, we each read sections of the prayer she has printed for us, going around in a circle—first Sr. Claudia, then me, then Sr. Ann on my right, and finally Sr. Tracy seated across from us. I notice my shoulders are tense as I wait for my turn, but my voice is still strong. When the last reflection concludes, there are a few minutes of silence before Sr. Claudia stands to extinguish the candle. Sr.  Tracy remains seated with her eyes closed, and when she finally stands up, Ann, Claudia, and I follow her out of the room.

Like Night and Day As these two brief glimpses of sisters’ lives in Kimwenza and Somerville suggest, the religious lives and practices of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

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in the Congo-Kinshasa and the Boston and Ipswich provinces look very different when viewed side by side.1 From morning to night, the dramatically varying ways in which sisters organize their daily lives in each place show how the structure of religious life is lived out on the ground. Throughout the world, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are guided by the same mission and charism. They are also bound by common articles and directives within their constitutions. However, a number of factors influence the ways ideas contained in these basic tenets are enacted in divergent contexts. In this chapter, I examine the personal and communal religious practices of Congolese and American sisters across provinces, asking what leads members to organize daily rituals and annual gatherings differently. I then describe how sisters in both places account for different forms of community life in the congregation and focus on the cultural and institutional explanations they offer. Contrasting sets of expectations regarding community life among Congolese and American sisters reflect the distinct ways sisters prioritize collective bonds and personal autonomy in both places. They also reveal how members construct and embody their religious selves in relation to other aspects of their cultural and national identities. For sisters in Kimwenza, participating in communal prayers and meals with other sisters on a daily basis remains a unifying aspect of religious life. These practices are organized very consistently across the province. When Congolese sisters reflect on their lives together within community, they foreground their African and Congolese identities, arguing, “Our whole life is in the community.” In contrast, the sisters I spent time with in the Boston and Ipswich provinces place varying degrees of importance on sharing day-to-day life with others. Overall, they tend to emphasize personal rather than communal religious practices. US sisters who continue to reside in communities and view this as an essential aspect of their vocation argue that living in smaller groups requires more personal responsibility and accountability than living in the large convents of the past. Those who live on their own or with one other person also underscore their individual responsibility to maintain an active spiritual life, but at the same time, they defend the decision to live independently as important in allowing them to do their work and maintain personal autonomy. In both cases, daily practices across Boston and Ipswich—whether communal or private—are organized in order to accommodate sisters’ ministries, varied work schedules, and individual preferences.

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Diverse Forms of Community Life among Catholic Sisters Most Catholic sisters lived in convents until Vatican II. While this is still the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo, changing lifestyles within American religious orders are well documented. In 1966, there were over twelve thousand convents in the United States with an average of fourteen to fifteen sisters living in each.2 As religious congregations undertook Vatican II renewals in response to Perfectae Caritatis (1965), Ecclesiae Sanctae (1966), and other council documents, American sisters revised the constitutions of their orders and reexamined the ceremonies, prayers, and rituals that had long defined their collective lives within convents. During this process, many sisters across the United States also reinterpreted the rigid rules of obedience and conformity that they perceived as limiting their individual independence and personal autonomy.3 Over time, this freed some women’s religious orders to experiment with new forms of community life and pursue ministries that took them beyond the schools, hospitals, and other congregationally sponsored institutions adjacent to their residences, where they had traditionally worked.4 With greater mobility and a more expansive understanding of their religious vows, sisters across the United States began moving from convents to smaller residential units in the early 1970s. This enabled them to experiment with “collegiality,” communities without direct superiors, and to integrate more fully into the neighborhoods where they worked. Sisters in most apostolic orders are now able to relocate at a distance from their motherhouses or convents in order to pursue specific ministries, taking personal responsibility for maintaining communication with their leadership and broader congregation.5 Sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke argue that these shifts have reduced the unique rewards of religious life in the West because living separately in a religious community, participating in daily devotions, and wearing a habit were important in distinguishing sisters from other Catholic laypeople and attracting vocations.6 Others like sociologist and Sister of Notre Dame Marie Augusta Neal conclude that previous restrictions created unnecessary distance between sisters and the people they encountered through their ministries. Living apart in large institutions that structured daily life and provided for basic necessities could isolate sisters from the concerns of everyday life as well as the needs of those around them.7 Broad changes across the global church since Vatican II are clearly reflected in the experiences of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Like most

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congregations, the Sisters of Notre Dame revised their constitutions after Vatican II in response to conciliar decrees.8 The Constitutions of 1989 provide the current framework for religious life within the congregation by outlining its charism, the story of its founding, spirit, mission, community, spirituality, vows, levels of government, and processes for formation and separation from the order. While these constitutions provide specific directives and explanations for each of these areas, they also offer a wide degree of latitude in the interpretation and implementation of private and collective practices, evident in the different forms of community that have emerged across provinces. The 1989 constitutions also emphasize the international character of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and express a commitment to welcoming and promoting cultural diversity as well as developing a “worldwide perspective.” Recognizing that “each local community has its distinctive character which expresses the individuality of its members,” the documents explain that life within the congregation is “essentially communal” but should also allow for the privacy of each sister. Specific practices such as daily Eucharist, morning and evening prayer, and sharing “daily in the worship of the Christian community” are still considered essential, but primary responsibility for these practices is now placed on the individual as “each sister has a responsibility to herself and to the community, to establish a habit of prayer which fosters and enriches her life of faith and mission.”9 The attention given to local context and the relationship between the individual and the community outlined in the constitutions gives each province the ability to determine its own priorities in organizing communal life. Instead of expecting that Sisters of Notre Dame will live out their vows and mandates in exactly the same way wherever they are, the congregation recognizes that this diversity of practices is consistent with its mission in the modern world and the inculturation of religious life in various places. On the ground, however, sisters explain and justify their lifestyles differently depending on where they are located and how they themselves practice their vocations. Leaders in Boston and Ipswich are much more likely to entrust a wide range of practices and commitments to the discretion of individual sisters, differentiating the needs of the individual from the needs of the community. Leaders in Congo-Kinshasa are rarely willing to compromise the full participation of members in community life and make few allowances for personal circumstances, ministries, or family demands.

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Vatican II and a Developing Theology of Inculturation While much has been written about how Vatican II changed the lives of Catholic sisters, the localization of religious life has been understood primarily through the experiences of women in North America and Europe. Vatican II initiated renewal from within through new developments in liturgy and religious life, but it also led to “outward renewal” by encouraging deeper engagement and dialogue with other cultures and religions.10 According to theologian Peter Phan, these twin goals of inward and outward renewal were explicitly articulated in the council’s first major constitution, Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) (1963). Calling the church to “adapt more suitably to the needs of our times” and “promote union among all who believe in Christ,” the most obvious and widereaching liturgical reform initiated by Sacrosanctum Concilium was “the use of the mother tongue” during liturgy and worship.11 Sacrosanctum Concilium also expressed the need to recognize and welcome the culture and traditions of people into liturgical celebrations, stating, “The Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples.”12 Other council documents more directly addressed the contributions of different cultures to Christianity.13 Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World; 1965) argued, “It is possible to create in every country the possibility of expressing the message of Christ in suitable terms and to foster vital contact and exchange between the church and different cultures.”14 Previous papal encyclicals by Leo XIII, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII recognized the value and contributions of different cultures and customs, but Vatican II liturgical reforms had a more lasting impact on Catholic communities around the globe.15 For the first time, the church affirmed the plurality and diversity of Catholicism while also promoting a new theological notion of unity that was not as dependent on institutional interpretation.16 Although the council did not refer to “inculturation” specifically, the church’s emphasis on the relationship between Catholicism and local cultural expressions provided more formal recognition for a theological process that had been at work since the birth of Christianity.17 Widely credited as the first to use the term, Superior General Pedro Arrupe of the Society of Jesus described this process when he wrote to Jesuits living around the world in 1978: “Inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that his experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the

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culture in question, but becomes a principle that animates, directs, and unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring about ‘a new creation.’”18 Following Vatican II, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II continued to develop, encourage, and name an emergent theology of inculturation—at times with Africa specifically in mind. In 1969, Pope Paul VI told African bishops gathered in the cathedral of Kampala, Uganda, there “must be an African Christianity.” He later wrote in Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelization in the Modern World; 1975) that when the church “puts down roots in a variety of cultural, social, and human terrains, she takes on different external expression and appearances in each part of the world.” Addressing the bishops of Zaire in 1980, Pope John Paul II echoed the sentiments of his predecessors: “It should be possible for Christianity to unite with what is deepest in the Zairean soul for an original culture, at this time African and Christian.”19 As Catholic communities around the globe began to replace Latin with local vernacular during liturgy, they also experimented with different forms of prayer and worship.20 On the African continent, Congolese were already at the forefront of developments in African philosophy and theology.21 Chris Egbulem Nwaka argues that the Catholic Church in Zaire was “particularly courageous” in responding to Vatican II’s call for the integration of Christian experience into the culture of local peoples and the Africanization of Christianity.22 Following Vatican II, Congolese bishops petitioned the Vatican for permission to develop a form of the Roman rite that would speak to the needs of local Catholics. In 1973, the Commission for Evangelization (COFE) began the first organized pastoral experiments with liturgy in Kinshasa under the leadership of theologian Laurent Mpongo.23 The Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaïre, known as the Rite Zaïrois or Zairian rite, was approved by the Vatican in 1988 and draws on traditional music, the role of the village chief, the African model of assembly, and the invocation of ancestors in the Eucharistic celebration.24 Congolese sisters were also active in addressing questions of how Catholicism could be interpreted in African contexts through colloquiums organized by the Union des Supérieurs Majeures en République de Zaïre (USUMA).25 In these forums, sisters began an ongoing process of reflection on how religious life in the country is shaped by a rich inheritance of African religious and cultural traditions. Some found new opportunities to relate their religious vocation as a Catholic sister to local ideas, practices, and roles. Others turned to the group for support as they navigated changes within their communities.

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Sr.  Céline, age eighty, remembers these days as both exhilarating and challenging. She witnessed postindependence upheaval in the country and was part of the transition from Belgian to Congolese leadership within the Sisters of Notre Dame. When she became the first Congolese mistress of novices in 1977, Sr.  Céline had little time to learn about her new apostolate from Belgian predecessors. Leadership structures within the Sisters of Notre Dame were quickly evolving, and missionary sisters continued to leave Zaire. “It was also the moment of the inculturation of religious life,” Sr. Céline explained. Although she welcomed these renewals, she was concerned they were taking place too quickly: “I was happy about these changes. But there was  .  .  . a certain fear, a worry that all these changes which we were looking for, that there were not examples [for them]. We wondered, What kind of religious are we forming? Will these changes not be unfortunate later for the people who are making the experience? There were some who put it into practice too quickly, without forming the sisters, without orientating them. As a consequence . . . it’s like the wind that shakes the tree: you see many leaves falling [many leaving religious life].” In moments of uncertainty or frustration, Sr. Céline turned to other Congolese religious who were wrestling with these same questions. She was encouraged by the leadership of Cardinal Malula, a proponent of inculturation who met with sisters often to provide guidance and who convened a group of all the USUMA formation houses in the region to discuss the challenges they were facing.

Rituals of Everyday Life As evident in the opening vignettes of this chapter, daily life is structured with relative consistency for the 129 sisters in the Congo-Kinshasa Province’s fourteen community houses across Kisantu, Lemfu, Ngidinga, Mpese, Kitenda, Pelende, Kimwenza, Nséélo, Mbanza-Ngungu, Kiséénso, Kinsáku, Limeté, Kimbála, and Loutété (Congo-Brazzaville). While quotidian rituals vary slightly depending on the size and location of each convent, they form the backbone of religious life in the province. Each convent has a small chapel, and the day usually begins with morning prayers and the celebration of Mass there or at the local parish. After a quiet breakfast in the réfectoire, sisters depart for their respective workplaces, and those who work nearby or on the premises return to eat lunch together in the middle of the day. The community gathers together once again in the evening for vespers in the chapel before dinner. Although some sisters who work as nurses, doctors, or health professionals keep demanding schedules that occasion-

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ally interfere with this framework for daily life, they still maintain a strong physical presence within the community. On the rare occasion when a sister must live apart for work or educational reasons, the arrangement is considered temporary. In Boston and Ipswich, the daily lives of sisters within the provinces are so diverse that it is difficult to describe them collectively. Approximately 315 sisters live in almost one hundred different residences across the greater Boston area, including apartments, spacious houses, and larger institutional settings. The sizes and settings of these communities vary between those who live alone (15 percent) or with one or two other sisters in an apartment (24 percent) and sisters who live in houses with three to eleven other community members (21 percent). There are also more than a hundred sisters (36 percent) in assisted-living settings in Ipswich (seventyfour sisters), the Notre Dame Long Term Care Center (twenty-five), and Notre Dame du Lac (fifteen) in Worcester.26 The communities at du Lac and the Notre Dame Long Term Care Centers also include laypeople. In these larger institutions, sisters who are physically able to will gather for Mass in the morning and take three meals a day together in the dining room. Although these daily rituals more closely resemble those of the CongoKinshasa Province, the communities are made up primarily of older sisters who have left the workforce or are coping with serious health problems. Unlike in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many sisters leave for work during the day but return in time to participate in the daily rituals of the community, most of these women are no longer actively engaged in outside ministries. Among the smaller communities of active sisters within the Boston and Ipswich provinces, practices vary significantly depending on how members decide to organize communal life. As members balance different work schedules and commutes, it is rare for sisters living in smaller residences to celebrate daily mass together. In fact, most of the sisters I spoke with did not talk about regularly attending church together as a community except on special occasions, and it was much more common for sisters in Boston or Ipswich to spend time relating stories of how they individually chose the parish where they go to Mass on Sundays. These women often described what they were looking for personally as they sought out a church home in what sociologist Wade Roof calls the “religious marketplace,” frequently emphasizing the importance of an economically and racially diverse congregation, a progressive social-justice orientation, responsive leadership, and good preaching.27 Sisters who live in houses with three to eleven others do gather for com-

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munity prayer, but the form, content, and regularity of these gatherings are more fluid than in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A community may gather every evening or a few days a week depending on the preferences and consensus among members. Rather than follow daily readings and prayers set out in a lectionary each day, members of the community may take turns planning communal prayer. Like Sr.  Claudia, they often draw creatively from a variety of spiritual books and resources to guide worship. Since most live in houses without a separate chapel, some communities designate a room or space in which to gather for prayer. As in Somerville, this sacred space may include diverse religious images, figures, or an altar.

Celebrating Sisterhood across Provinces Just as daily life is organized very differently in the two regions, there is dramatic variation in how the provinces gather together to commemorate important events throughout the year. Although the constitutions outline five days related to their foundress that should be remembered and celebrated as “significant moments in the life of the congregation,” these occasions are recognized in various ways throughout Notre Dame communities.28 There are other significant community events in the annual life of the institute such as sisters’ vow days and jubilees, and these celebrations also look different depending on the province. In the Boston and Ipswich provinces, individual involvement in province activities varies widely and technology now play a crucial role in bringing sisters together across regions. US leadership relies on technology to facilitate sisters’ discussion and participation in governance issues among groups in California, Maryland, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, for example. In addition to face-to-face meetings, members use the congregation’s intranet service First Class to communicate with other sisters at the local, provincial, and congregational levels. Skype, Zoom, and Facetime also enable members to communicate with one another across significant distances. This is very different from Congo-Kinshasa, where with few exceptions, sisters are physically present for programs, gatherings, celebrations, and the annual assemblées provinciales through which all the regional communities gather to discuss and assess the negative and positive developments of the past year.29 The importance of annual gatherings in the Congo-Kinshasa Province became clear to me during the final weeks of my stay in Kimwenza. One afternoon in early August, I returned to the convent to find the rocks lining the pathways and flowerbeds throughout the compound gleaming with a

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fresh coat of white paint. Walking through the large metal gate of the main entrance past the newly constructed event hall to the provincial house, I noticed that the lower trunks of the tall trees growing on the grounds were also painted the same bright white. Pausing to admire the striking contrast of these white borders against the tall palm trees, vivid orange blossoms, and leafy green vegetation, I thought back to my previous conversations with sisters that summer. Every August, the sisters gather at the provincial house to celebrate the women who are making either their first or their final “perpetual” vows. The personal magnitude of vow day was evident in the lively stories shared by young sisters like Claire who, at twenty-six, had recently professed her first vows. When I sat with Sr. Claire one evening, surrounded by tall sunflowers in the front garden of the Kisantu convent, she told me with great emotion how much the celebration meant to her: “I will never forget that day until the day I die.” The significance of the celebration was also clear from conversations with sisters preparing to make their perpetual vows. This group of women had traveled to Namur the previous summer to spend two months learning about the origins of the congregation at the motherhouse, had met with the province leadership team responsible for “accepting” them for perpetual vows, and had recently returned from a thirty-day silent retreat.30 In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim described moments of “collective effervescence,” when participation in a shared religious ritual draws an individual outside one’s self, experiencing a collective energy that is intensified by the social setting.31 As I watched Kimwenza come alive with preparations for vow day, I was struck by how fully each member of the community invested herself in the upcoming celebration. Painting the rocks and tree trunks white was only the first outward sign of the cleaning, decorating, sewing, and cooking that would be undertaken in order to commemorate the day. Sr. Maryse, the forty-five-year-old tailor of the provincial house, was discussing the fabric that had been chosen for members of the province to wear as sisters began circulating through her sewing room to arrange fittings. As an external expression of solidarity, in Congo, groups of friends, family members, or voluntary associations often select a common fabric to tailor clothing for special occasions such as parties, weddings, graduations, or religious celebrations.32 When sisters began wearing wraparound skirts in the style of local women following President Mobutu’s banning of Western clothing in 1972, they also embraced this Congolese custom.33 On vow day, sisters from across the province wear skirts and blouses cut from the same cloth to signal their collective identity.

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Figure 3.2. Ordination celebration at the Church of St. Mary in Kimwenza, Democratic Republic of Congo

In the midst of daily life at the provincial house, I soon learned that the upcoming celebration was more than just a province-wide event for Sisters of Notre Dame. The ceremony was also an important opportunity for sisters to invite their family, friends, and surrounding communities to participate in the life of the congregation and to show them its value. Members affirm their commitment to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur publicly by pronouncing their vows, but they also mark the occasion with food, singing, and dancing in a celebration that lasts the entire day and late into the night. When Sr. Louise realized I would be visiting mutual friends one weekend in N’djili, a commune of Kinshasa, she asked me to deliver them an official invitation to the celebration. Having grown up together in the same local parish where she first felt called to religious life, Sr. Louise wanted the family to be present as she made her perpetual vows. For some sisters, pronouncing first vows in front of a wider community was an important turning point in their relationships with family members and friends who were reluctant to accept their religious vocations. Until her first vows, Sr. Bernadette’s mother and uncle refused to take her decision to become a sister seriously. When they witnessed her vow celebration, how-

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ever, they shared in her joy. She remembers, “The way I was pronouncing them [the vows] attracted their hearts and they said, ‘Our daughter wanted to join. She was serious, telling us she wanted to go become a nun.’” Other sisters shared similar experiences as they invited friends and family to be a part of the celebration, publicly recognizing the life they had chosen and their new place within this community of women. When taking first or final vows, Congolese sisters speak the same words as women in Boston, Ipswich, or any other province of the congregation: “I, (name), vow to God in your presence, Sister (name and office) chastity, poverty, and obedience for (time) in the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and according to the Constitutions of the Congregation.” In addition to speaking these lines, a sister pronouncing her vows is asked to express, in her own words, “the intention to follow Jesus Christ for the sake of the reign of God; fidelity to the way of life and mission of the Congregation; recognition of the special place of Mary in our lives; reliance on the faithful love of God who inspired these vows.”34 Each ceremony of profession takes place in a liturgical context, with the presence of province leadership and a covenant ceremony in which the sister and community express their mutual pledge of fidelity. Beyond these common elements, the settings in which the vows are spoken and celebrated look very different depending on the province. Unlike Congolese sisters, who undertake preparations for the celebration of vows as a province-wide responsibility, sisters in Boston and Ipswich typically pronounce their vows within the communities where they live or the parishes where they work and decide individually how they would like to mark the occasion. Following Vatican II, sisters in the United States were given a great deal of leeway to experiment with liturgy. In 1970, Sr. Bridget remembers pushing the outer boundaries of this new freedom as she prepared to renew her vows in the community where she was living. Growing up in the “Elvis Presley generation,” Bridget determined that the fullest expression of her happiness would be dancing, so she approached the superior of her community about performing a liturgical dance. Although visibly perplexed by the request, the superior agreed with two conditions: the twenty other members of the community must agree to it and the priest celebrating Mass must leave the sanctuary during the dance. Although the proposal was met with some initial skepticism from one young sister, everyone in the house eventually agreed, including a very traditional elderly sister who told her, “I will keep my eyes on my prayer book. Yes, if this is the way you wish to celebrate your vow day, you may do it.” When the day arrived, the priest left the sanc-

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Figure 3.3. Sisters preparing for a journey at the provincial house in Kimwenza, Democratic Republic of Congo

tuary reluctantly at the insistence of the superior as Sr. Bridget danced to the hymn she had chosen surrounded by her community members. These depictions of how Congolese and American sisters prepare for and celebrate their vows represent one illustrative example of the differences in how province events are experienced throughout the year. With the exception of family visits, almost everything in the Congo-Kinshasa Province is done within the context of community life. During July and August, Kimwenza became a hub of province-wide activity as groups of sisters across the region convened for various events and programs, including a ten-day English-language and technology program led by four visiting American sisters and a week-long annual retreat. Sisters also passed through the provincial house on their way to and from international meetings and assignments. Large white SUVs navigated by province drivers arrived and departed with groups of sisters dressed in their best pagnes and matching blouses as I tried to keep track of all the different activities in which they were participating while school was out of session. Despite the barriers of poor roads and unreliable transportation throughout the country, sisters from the furthest reaches of the province, some three hun-

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dred kilometers away in the country’s Bandundu territorial province, had the opportunity to join other Notre Dame communities for the programs, events, and celebrations taking place that summer. In my last week at the provincial house, over forty sisters gathered in Kimwenza for their annual retreat, and life within the compound shifted according to the needs of these women. During the day, I observed sisters walking around the grounds individually, silent in reflection and prayer. Sisters on retreat celebrated Mass separately in the morning and ate their meals together in the réfectoire. The fewer than twenty women at the provincial house who were not participating in the retreat took meals together in the community room, which was transformed into a small dining area. Two long rectangular tables were placed parallel to one another at the far end of the room. Before every meal, we carried containers of food across the courtyard from the kitchen and arranged them on the long table against the back wall. A station for silverware and flatware was set on a square table under one window, draped with a cloth between meals to keep everything clean. With fewer women, our meals were quieter and more casual. Some sisters sat on the couches, eating around the small coffee table, while the rest of us ate at the second long table. As I reflected on this change of pace at the provincial house during my final days in Kimwenza, I was struck by how closely the sisters’ lives are woven into the fabric of community life—not only through the daily rituals within the convents where they live but also in the larger province activities that bring sisters across different regions together at various points during the year.

Understanding Different Forms of Community Life Congolese and American Sisters of Notre Dame are aware that many of their personal and communal practices vary between provinces. Congolese sisters in particular differentiate their own understandings of a communally based religious life by drawing cultural distinctions between their lifestyle and those of members in other provinces. As these women call attention to the important differences they perceive, and as they offer ethnonational explanations for them, they lay claim to a Congolese tradition of Catholicism, one that they frame as broadly African but also specifically Congolese. Sisters in Boston and Ipswich made similar cultural comparisons but spent more time talking about institutional transformation and how the structures of community life and their own experiences within it have changed over time.

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“We Cook in One Pot”: Cultural Explanations for Differences in Congo-Kinshasa During my conversations with Congolese sisters, members continually stressed the importance they place on eating and praying together as a community. The idea of sisters living individually in apartments or preparing meals separately within the same house, as some sisters in other parts of the world do, remains foreign to most members. Those who had spent time in other countries often drew a sharp contrast between their own communitarian lifestyle and what they observed in the provinces they visited. While studying in Boston, Sr. Victoire compared her own culture to the culture of “freedom” she experienced in the United States: “For us, the culture of the country is collective. . . . The whole life is community. In the Congo, we value a lot being in the community and living in community and doing everything in community.” Although Congolese sisters did not explicitly criticize different ways of life among their international counterparts when talking with me, they often seemed puzzled by them. As Sr. Colette explained, the custom of living alone does not exist in Congo as it does in the United States. She spoke carefully: “It is like a surprise [for me]. Those sisters, they are nice, they are good, but I was wondering, ‘How can she live alone in an apartment?’ That is the question.” Sr.  Maryse also deliberated, “They stay by themselves. When do they pray?” Other Congolese sisters posed similar questions, wondering where and at what times a sister who lives alone prays and how she organizes her time. As evident in these exchanges, sisters in Congo-Kinshasa view what many Boston and Ipswich sisters now consider a private religious practice—prayer—as both personal and communal. In the words of Sr. Victoire, “Everyone has private time to pray, but we always have prayer together.” Like many members of the congregation, Sr. Henriette had the opportunity to spend time in Namur, Belgium, while she was preparing to make her perpetual vows as part of the Julie Renewal Program. As the youngest member of a group that included other Sisters of Notre Dame from around the world who were in the process of making final vows, Sr, Henriette visited important congregational landmarks in Belgium and France while attending sessions on prayer, spirituality, and the vows themselves.35 During her stay at the motherhouse in Namur, she became very conscious of differences between the lifestyles of sisters in Belgium and Congo and used cultural terms to frame variations in living arrangements: “In Belgium, there are sisters who live in apartments—they are one or two. That is how it

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is, but it is supported by the congregation. Here in Africa, especially in the Congo, we are in communities. So you will see us eat [and] pray together in the morning, in the evening. . . . At noon we each go to our occupations. Our whole life here in Africa, especially in the Congo, is essentially in the community. We are together.” After spending time in Belgium, Sr. Jacqueline also attributed variations in community practices to the role of culture. “In the morning, we pray together, we have lunch together, we eat together. In the evening, we are together,” she told me. “There, people are together too, but sometimes, one might say, ‘This evening, I am going to eat somewhere else,’ and she is gone.” In light of these differences, Jacqueline concluded: “It is especially culture that makes a difference in our lives, and in our community life. Even though we are SNDs, it’s not the same in Europe and in America, for example. . . . Culture—it is what differentiates. Whether it is in the life of prayer [or] in daily life, it is the culture, which is different between Europe and America.” Cultural explanations for differences were not limited to comparisons with sisters in Europe or North America. While completing her undergraduate degree in Nairobi, Sr. Mamy was struck by the individualized practices she observed among Kenyan Sisters of Notre Dame, whose province was founded by American sisters in 1965.36 Drawing on culinary imagery to capture her experience there, she explained that in Congo, the entire Notre Dame community cooks and eats from the same pot, while in Kenya, each sister cooks separately in her own small pot: “We have to eat breakfast together, lunch together, and supper together. But there  .  .  . you go to the fridge, you cook by yourself, only your lunch. You cook your lunch, but you are in the community, [and] you cook only your lunch. You go and eat [and] someone else comes. She goes to cook her lunch and eats. But for us, we know that we cook in one pot, and we share all of us. But for them, someone comes with a small pot, she cooks for herself, she eats.” When I asked Sr.  Mamy what cooking and eating together brings to convent life, she spoke softly, placing emphasis on each word as she reflected on the meaning and purpose she finds in community: “Joys. It brings joys and peace. For example, [say] I was walking in the garden, and another sister went to teach. Another one, maybe she went [out] for pastoral work. The mealtime comes [and] we come together. I will share what I saw in the garden, and another person will come and say who she met and where she went. You see, it makes the community lively. You laugh [together]. . . . I think it is because of the culture also. Our culture is very different from other cultures. We live in families—we are used to living in families.” US sisters also pointed to the role of culture as they compared the life-

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styles of members in different places. While doing formation work for the congregation, Sr. Maureen had the opportunity to live with Sisters of Notre Dame in South Africa for almost two years and travel to other African provinces. Drawing on these transnational experiences, Maureen contrasted the individualization of religious life in the West with a more communal spirit she observed among sisters in the Southern Hemisphere. “We live the individualization of the West,” she reflected. “The autonomy of the individual is part of our culture, whereas they live the communal attitude of the south. The autonomy of the individual is not . . . in their bones or in their blood the same way it is in us.” Sr. Maureen went on to recount the popular South African concept of umbutu, interpreting the expression in her own words and highlighting the contrast: “‘I am because we are.’ It’s like there is no me without the community. That’s not the Western—it’s not in our culture. I may want and like the community, but I don’t come from the community in the same way.” Maureen brought up the example of clothing to further illustrate this communal spirit, explaining that in the United States, if someone walks in the door wearing exactly the same sweater and pants you are wearing, “we don’t like it.” In places like Congo and Nigeria, she pointed out, wearing the same clothing as someone else is celebrated. “Living Responsibly”: Institutional Explanations for the Development of Community Life in Greater Boston Whereas Congolese sisters frequently contrasted their communitarian practices to the individualization of religious life in other places, sisters across the Boston and Ipswich provinces were more likely to compare their current lifestyles to experiences in the larger Notre Dame institutions of the past. Whether living alone or with others, older American sisters focused on how new forms of community life have enabled the development of stronger relationships between sisters as well as a greater sense of personal responsibility and accountability. For sisters who joined the congregation between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s, life within Notre Dame could be rigid, unduly structured, and at times unforgiving. Those who experienced this inflexibility expressed mixed feelings about the practices that previously defined their daily lives. Overall, there was little nostalgia for the larger convents they first entered. Instead, sisters argued they were too far removed from the concerns and realities of everyday people, with rules rather than relationships at the center of the community. Sr. Gail explained that the meaning of community has changed over time to reflect a deeper

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appreciation of human needs and relationships: “The Sisters of Notre Dame have always lived a community life. . . . At one point you lived in community, and you may as well [have] lived by yourself because you didn’t talk to anybody after you came in from your work and the ministry of the day. We had a ‘Rule of Silence.’ We spoke at meals, maybe at recreation, but then at night, it was Grand Silence. But it moved, and it moved because of the importance of relationships in your life.” Although the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur was founded as an apostolic order, US sisters referred to the congregation as “semimonastic” or “semicloistered” during this period because of its strict rules regarding family visits, talking during meals, and periods of silence. “I think our formation was very formal, very letter of the law,” reflected Sr. Dorothy, who entered in 1946. “In fact, they used to say in those days that we were holier than the Belgians. Being an offshoot with the motherhouse in Belgium, there was a sense that you had to be faithful to those traditions.” US sisters prided themselves that even their curtains matched those of the motherhouse in Namur. Sr.  Maura, an eighty-two-year-old teacher who entered the following year, described the structure of daily life in great detail. In the novitiate, sisters awoke at 5:00 a.m. and were expected to be in the chapel by 5:30, beds made and fully dressed in their habits. Morning prayer was followed by liturgy and shared housework. Sisters ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, but instead of talking during these meals, they usually listened to a community member read aloud. Most of the talking in the convent was done during two daily recreation periods, one following lunch and the other following dinner. By 8:00 or 8:45 p.m., sisters were “marching en masse to chapel to say evening prayer.” After prayer, the “Great Silence” would begin, and sisters were expected to keep the silence until morning prayers. When sisters entered the novitiate, they were taught to value detachment from the world, which in effect meant detachment from family and those closest to them in order to achieve greater closeness with God. Sisters were not allowed to return home after they entered the order. Like a number of the women who joined before 1967, Sr. Maureen remembers, “When I left my house the day I entered, I didn’t think I would ever see it again.” Family and friends could come to the convent on monthly visiting days, but each sister was allowed only four visitors, and everyone gathered in a big parlor to converse. Sr. Maura, who was raised in what she describes as a big and loving family, remembers questioning these types of rules in her own mind, thinking, “I don’t get that. I don’t think that is part of char-

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ity or love.” In her own Catholic upbringing, Maura’s Irish mother had always emphasized “faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is love.” Now, sixty-five years later, she remembers rebelling internally against some aspects of her formation that did not seem to align with these values. During this period, “particular friendships,” or becoming too close with another sister, were also discouraged. When sisters went outside to walk the grounds of the Waltham Notre Dame novitiate at recreation time, they were expected to stroll in threes, and superiors generally frowned upon spending time with only one or two friends. Instead of focusing attention on loving God, your neighbor, and yourself as Jesus taught in the Gospels, these rules could inhibit the development of sisters’ relationships with others. Sr.  Maura shook her head as she recalled how difficult it was when young women left the convent without having the chance to say good-bye to the community. “They never told you when someone was leaving,” she explained. “The person just disappeared into the night. I don’t know why.” Sr. Maura remembered one night, in particular, when she was still a young professed sister. Walking the grounds, she met another woman who had become a good friend; she remembered the conversation that followed: “‘Maura, I’ve got to tell you something,’ she said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘No!’ And she said, ‘I’m leaving tonight.’ And so I said, ‘It’s not fair. I don’t mean it’s not fair that you have made a decision. I’ll miss you. You’ve been my friend—but it’s not fair the way you’re leaving.’” Looking back, many older sisters agreed it would be difficult to live through their early formation again but explained that at the time, they believed this training would be valuable to them later in their religious lives. When American sisters talked about making the transition from living in such large structured institutions to smaller communities, they emphasized that smaller communities require more attention and responsiveness to relationships with others, as well as greater personal responsibility for one’s actions and decisions. Sr.  Genie entered the congregation in 1971. In her first mission as a young sister, she lived with fifteen women. In her second, she lived with fifty-eight. Genie now lives in an apartment with one sister, and when she reflects on these different experiences, she feels a greater sense of accountability now than she ever did when living with fifteen or fifty-eight women: “If I’m honest, I have to say, there is far more accountability than . . . in the larger communities. There is far more that pulls upon me as far as thinking about and being responsive to another in a situation. You know, if I’m really tired in a big group, I can disappear. But in a small group, you can’t. I mean, no matter where you’re at, you

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have to kind of muster up some energy to be with those people.” Similarly, Sr.  Dorothy remembered moving into a small community of six without a superior “in charge of making all the decisions” and how it personalized her understanding of her religious vows: “When there wasn’t a boss in the house, obedience turned into something more personal: responsibility and commitment to the mission and the clarity of the mission. Poverty changed, and I think in general, I could say there was a lot more personal responsibility in the way you lived out the vow. . . . I mean you were sort of corralled to conform in the old style, and it was now much more [about] personal responsibility and personal freedom.” In addition to investing more time and energy into maintaining relationships with community members, moving from institutions maintained by the province into residential houses and apartments required sisters to take on the mundane chores of everyday life like making coffee, taking out the garbage, cleaning the house, cutting the lawn, and shoveling snow. Living with five other sisters, Sr. Gail explained, We share meals, we share the shopping, we share taking care of your life. You know what it’s like to take care of a house even if you rent because you have to pay the rent. You have to budget, you have to go shopping, you have to cook the food, you have to keep things clean. And even though we don’t have little kids to care about, somebody is always going to drive you crazy because they always leave their stuff on the stairs. You know, you have to learn how to live with each other, and for a very long time.

Whereas many young Congolese women seemed to be drawn specifically to the “common life” of Notre Dame, my conversations with sisters in Boston and Ipswich reflected the diversity of lifestyles among members.37 Although not fully representative of province living arrangements, most of the American sisters I met lived in community with other sisters and continued to value this aspect of their religious lives. They described eating, talking, and praying together in the evenings but rather than assuming the inherent value of living within a community as many Congolese sisters did, they spoke in terms of “the choice to live in community.” Unlike members of the Congo-Kinshasa Province, they also drew clear boundaries between themselves and the community. As Sr.  Judy talked about praying and sharing daily life with other sisters, she focused on the ways she feels personally encouraged and nurtured through communal life. She is happy to go home at night to people who understand what she is doing and why. At the same time, she acknowl-

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edged her individual preference for this lifestyle and framed the decision in terms of the individualized self—in this case, her extroverted nature. Recognizing there are other sisters who feel differently and want to live alone, she told me, I choose to live simply. I choose to live in a community where there’s more than myself. That is for selfish reasons, because I’m nurtured and encouraged, but it’s also for the idea of praying together daily, sharing what happens in the day, at the end of the day. . . . I’m an extrovert so I need someone to talk to. I don’t know how I’d do living on my own, yet I know people who live on their own and are in ministries similar to what I am or as demanding and need the time to go home at night and be quiet, be alone, you know. I do need some of that, but I get it right after work. I usually go to my room, or I’ll go for a walk or try to filter some of the stuff of the day.

Some sisters mentioned the ways in which community feeds their spiritual life and provides a foundation for their work with others. “I live with good people,” reflected Sr. Vivian, “I live with very caring [people]. We pray together . . . spirituality has to be there. The ability to pray, to nourish our own faith in order to be able to help others—it’s a whole mutual thing there.” Others talked about how community challenges them in productive ways. “If you need to be pushed, you’re pushed gently,” explained Sr.  Linda. In all of these cases, sisters were explicit about what they gain personally from community life without assuming their own experience was universal. Only a few of the sisters I talked with in Boston and Ipswich lived alone. Rather than focusing on their reasons for living independently, these women stressed a broader sense of community, which extends beyond physical proximity or living under the same roof. Sr.  Lana, for example, emphasized that as sisters have freed themselves from the “old rigidity” of the past, they have maintained a strong communal sense through their relationships with others. “Our community has gone beyond just being a Notre Dame small community of women who eat together, pray together, sleep, et cetera,” she explained. “It’s more inclusive . . . our community includes [all] other Sisters of Notre Dame.” Sr. Lana prays and meditates daily, but without the presence of fellow members. She stays connected to her province through everyday communication with other Sisters of Notre Dame via email or over the phone and regularly attends province meetings on a variety of topics from the Vatican’s apostolic visitation to the restructuring of US provinces. Lana describes her

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decision to live alone as part of the psychological freedom and individuality she has worked hard at achieving since the 1960s: “For me, it was freeing. The challenges were ‘How am I going to plan out the lifestyle? What is it going to be like when you don’t have people looking at you and interacting shoulder to shoulder frequently?’” Reflecting on her lifestyle, she argues that living on her own as a sister means “living responsibly” even when her work as a professor at a state university could be a “24-7 job.” As evident in these conversations, both groups of sisters—those who live alone and those who live with others—see themselves as individuals making decisions about the types of lives they would like to lead and managing different sets of relationships to one another and the larger congregation. When viewed in light of how sisters talk about communal practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, such responses reveal very different understandings and embodiments of selfhood in religious life.

Conclusions In the years since Vatican II, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have revised their constitutions to acknowledge the definitive role of culture and local context in shaping the personal and communal practices of sisters in different places. These changes created institutional space in which new forms of community life could emerge and evolve. Today, Congolese and American sisters’ practices express different priorities within the provinces and varying degrees of investment in communal life and personal autonomy. They also reflect contrasting social and cultural realities across the two locations. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is rare for single women (or men) to live alone without kin, and it much more common for single individuals to live in extended households made up of family members or close family friends. In the US, the movement of sisters out of larger convents and into smaller communities and low-income neighborhoods was undoubtedly a response to Vatican II’s call for greater engagement with the world and sisters’ changing understandings of religious life. At the same time, American sisters were deeply influenced by social movements of the 1960s, including the civil rights, women’s rights, antiwar, farmworker, and sanctuary movements.38 Like many US Catholics, they were inspired by the growth of liberation theology and the formation of Christian base communities across Latin America.39 To varying degrees, these movements offered compelling critiques of large social institutions and advocated for the development of smaller intentional communities formed in solidarity with people living in

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poverty. Influenced by their own personal experiences in convents and the broader social changes taking place around them, US sisters have continued to embrace more collegial forms of community life and have gradually accepted sisters living independently either to be nearer their ministry sites or because of personal preference. Living in smaller communities has given many the opportunity to embed themselves in the neighborhoods where they minister and to adopt lifestyles and schedules that accommodate their work in secular settings. Although most of the women I spoke with fully embraced these changes, there were a few sisters who expressed concerns about the growing individualization of religious life in the United States. A younger member of the congregation pointed out to me that many women entering religious congregations today are seeking a spiritual community and home. As sisters move to smaller residences and live at greater distances from one another, it may become more difficult to sustain a vibrant community life for new members. There are fewer structures of accountability in the Boston and Ipswich provinces than there were in the past, and sisters clearly differentiate their own needs and motivations from those of the community or congregation. In the Congo-Kinshasa Province, Sisters of Notre Dame remain committed to a communal life in which members are physically present for the activities of daily life and annual province events. Aware of the rapidly changing lifestyles of sisters in North America and Europe, Congolese sisters do not explain their collective practices in terms of the pre–Vatican II traditions of the congregation. They argue that a common life of eating, praying, and celebrating together resonates with their own cultural understandings and is as an expression of their distinctly African and Congolese identities within the broader congregation and Catholic Church. Beyond influencing everyday practices, the collective and individual orientations of the two provinces are also evident in how sisters translate the global mission of the congregation into the regional settings where they work (which I address in chapter 5). As sisters develop new social ministries and think about the meaning of these ministries, they bring different understandings of their place within the organization to their work. Before turning to sisters’ ministries, I will examine the organizational pathways through which American and Congolese women enter the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

FOUR

Pathways to Religious Life for American and Congolese Women

Sr. Lynn never missed a day of high school. Despite the long commute on two trains and a bus that brought her from Chelsea to the heart of South Boston, where she attended Cardinal Cushing Central High School, her mother said there was not a day she didn’t come home singing. As Sr. Lynn relates her high school experiences to me, she describes herself as a mediocre student who excelled at languages but struggled in mathematics. Whatever Lynn lacked in academic standing, she made up for in personality and extracurricular activities. As a member of the basketball team, Lynn longed for the first of October, when she could get onto the court. Like many of her teammates, she was also a member of Glee Club. Even though she “couldn’t sing worth beans,” her acting ability landed her a lead role in the senior class play. Sr. Lynn enjoyed the challenges of learning new subjects and threw herself wholeheartedly into school activities. What stands out most clearly in Sr.  Lynn’s memory as she recounts the adventures of high school are the women who taught her. Although the sisters shared the traditional pre– Vatican II Catholic spirituality of the time, their love for imparting knowledge and seeing students absorb it shone through to Sr. Lynn. In her eyes, Sisters of Notre Dame were superb teachers who enjoyed what they were doing. They were “simple, and they were joyful, and they just loved being who they were.” She went on: “I can’t say enough about their joyfulness and their excitement about educating us.” When Lynn thought about what she wanted to do with her life after high school graduation, she was certain she wanted to become a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur. “A lot of sisters say, ‘I was called by God,’” reflects Sr. Lynn. “I was called by people.” Although Sr.  Lynn had no doubt that her future was with the sisters, her Polish mother fought the decision tooth and nail. Lynn’s mother was

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unwavering in her opposition to her oldest daughter entering religious life. “No good Polish girl ever goes into the convent. You get married and have children,” she told Lynn. Marching straight into the school, she told the sisters directly, “You know, she is not going into the convent.” Unable to convince her mother, Lynn went to Northeastern University after high school graduation because she had not been accepted at her first choice, the Sisters of Notre Dame’s Emmanuel College.1 At Northeastern, Lynn spent most of her time in the gym rather than studying because all she wanted to do was become a sister. Finally, after a yearlong struggle with her parents, Lynn’s mother agreed to let her enter the congregation. In 1963, at the age of nineteen, Sr. Lynn began her training as a novice. Eventually, Lynn’s mother recognized her daughter’s happiness in the life she had chosen. “She was happy because I was happy,” Lynn explained as she reflected on her early years in the congregation. Lynn went on to finish her undergraduate degree at Emmanuel College. Although her mother died before Sr. Lynn graduated, she knows she would have been very proud.

Sr.  Amélie grew up in the small village of Ngeba, 120 kilometers south of Kinshasa in what is now the province of Kongo-Central.2 As a child, Sr. Amélie remembers seeing Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur ministering in her village, but she did not know what community they belonged to until she began to study at their local primary school. Although she was introduced to other religious orders that worked in the region, the Sisters of Notre Dame remained her favorite. She noticed the kindness they showed to everyone they met, and she wanted to be like them. “What impressed me the most was their humanitarian work,” explains Sr.  Amélie. “When they arrived in the village, they would go from house to house every morning to greet people. The sisters fetched water and gathered firewood for the sick. I told myself, ‘I just need to go to the Sisters of Notre Dame and become like them.’ I could not go anywhere else.” When Sr.  Amélie reached the eleventh grade, she told her parents she wanted to become a sister. At first, her mother refused, and Amélie worried her older brother would also oppose the decision. Amélie’s mother struggled with depression and could not bear the thought of being separated from her only daughter still living at home. Amélie’s presence filled a void for her mother in the absence of her other children. Turning to her father for support, Amélie was relieved to find that as a Catholic, he felt obligated to encourage her vocation. He told her, “I’ll support you even if your mother will not because it is the Lord who is calling.”

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At first, Amélie kept her desire to enter religious life to herself and other members of her family. She did not want to tell her friends because she feared they would mock her decision. She thought to herself, “If I announce it, everyone will laugh at me.” As Amélie predicted, the day she told her classmates, they did laugh at her, saying, “Why become a sister? It is useless!” Amélie was undeterred, and in 1984, at the age of twenty-two, she began as a Notre Dame postulant, professing her first vows in 1988. Remembering the friends who initially mocked her choice, Sr. Amélie smiles a little, bringing her hands together and looking straight ahead. When she meets these same people today, they react differently. Some “run away because of the life they lead today,” she explains. Others are happy to see how well she is doing, and even envy her circumstances. Most of the young women Amélie grew up with did not finish their studies, and she believes they are leading more difficult lives than she, farming, caring for children, and quickly aging while she “stays young.”

Called by People Sr.  Lynn assumed that other Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Boston would say they were called by God when I talked with them about their motivations for becoming a sister. However, in conversations with members of the Boston and Ipswich provinces, I found that most sisters were also, as Sr. Lynn phrased it, “called by people.” They first considered religious life because of the women who were their teachers and role models in the classroom as well as on the playground and basketball court. It was not necessarily the mission that initially attracted them to the congregation but what they describe as the joy, simplicity, and “quality of being” they observed among their teachers. For many, the decision to enter religious life was influenced by a pre–Vatican II theology that portrayed religious life as a higher calling and pleasing to God, but it was also inspired by the example of real women who seemed genuinely happy and fulfilled in the lives they were leading and skilled at the work they were doing. In fact, when telling the stories of why they decided to become sisters, few women emphasized religious and spiritual experiences. Instead, they focused on the examples of their teachers and the social networks and community support that made a religious vocation seem possible, practical, and meaningful. As these young women considered what to do with their lives, becoming a sister made sense because of the people they knew within the congregation, their peers who were also considering religious life, and their supportive local communities.

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Entering the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Boston between 1940 and 1964 meant choosing a vocation and future that seemed stable and relatively secure. Novices wanted to become like the capable women who taught them, and they expected to spend the rest of their lives teaching in Notre Dame schools and parishes. Although this began to change for those entering during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, it was not until the 1980s that American women interested in becoming sisters were actively seeking out religious congregations, looking for opportunities beyond their own families, schools, churches, and social circles. Religious life today offers more flexibility, autonomy, and choice—but much less certainty. When women in the Congo-Kinshasa Province talked to me about their decisions to become Sisters of Notre Dame, they often, like Sr. Amélie, recalled vivid images of the sisters they met in the villages where they were raised. Others, like members in Boston, described the qualities of the sisters they had as teachers and explained how these women inspired them. Whether in the villages where they watched sisters helping others or in schools where they admired how their teachers responded to the needs of students, it was often a “way of being” and a physical embodiment of religious vocation and community that attracted young Congolese women to the congregation. Most were educated in Catholic schools, and many were raised in devout second- or third-generation Catholic families where at least a few members supported their decision to enter religious life because they were “good Christians.” Catholic sisters, priests, and brothers and the institutions they administer are highly visible throughout Congo.3 The Catholic Church regularly steps in to fill institutional gaps left by the state, and religious orders form the backbone of educational and health care services throughout the country. Congolese Catholics are quick to explain that if you want something done, you must work through the church. Nevertheless, choosing a life that prohibits childbearing remains very controversial across different levels of the society, particularly for women. Congolese sisters have never enjoyed the same support for religious vocations that Irish American sisters did during the 1940s, ’50s, or ’60s in Boston. When telling the story of how they became sisters, the majority of Congolese women I spoke with emphasized the importance of fertility and children in Africa. They described encountering social opposition to their lifestyle among peers, family members, and other people in their communities who could not understand why they would choose to live a “sterile” life without offspring. Despite the deeply rooted cultural ideas and norms about motherhood

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that are a barrier to entry for young Congolese women interested in religious life, those who do decide to join the congregation become part of a vibrant multigenerational community that offers clear structure and relative security within a constantly shifting economic and political landscape. Sisters of Notre Dame in the Congo-Kinshasa Province have little control over where they are sent within the province or the specific ministries they will undertake, but they know as members of an international religious order, they will likely have opportunities for further education and personal development. While many of their family members and friends face uncertain employment prospects regardless of educational attainment, becoming a sister offers lifelong work and a relatively high standard of living. In this chapter, I outline the different ways women in the Boston, Ipswich, and Congo-Kinshasa provinces were introduced to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, and I focus on the people, institutions, and social networks that were fundamental to their decisions to enter religious life. Historically, there have been different patterns of support for religious vocations among American and Congolese women. In Boston, the broadbased support for vocations that existed within close-knit ethnic communities where most members were raised prior to Vatican II has eroded, whereas young women who entered the novitiate in Kisantu and later Kimwenza never experienced this type of communal support as they pursued religious life. From the moment the novitiate in Congo opened its doors to local women in 1959, those who entered struggled to justify and explain their presence within a Belgian religious order to their families and communities, Congolese nationalists, and the white missionary sisters who ambivalently welcomed them into the congregation. More recent generations of Congolese sisters have relied on the encouragement of parish vocation groups, the example and mentorship of older Congolese sisters, and personal encouragement from family members who believed God was indeed calling them to religious life.

Growing Racial, Ethnic, and National Diversity among Sisters Like the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, most women’s religious institutes in the United States trace their roots back to Europe. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these organizations served large immigrant populations across the country. Catholic sisters usually worked with people who shared their own racial and ethnic backgrounds, and even when their ministries expanded to serve a broader, more diverse population, orders continued to attract and recruit primarily European American

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Catholics.4 Women of African descent, in particular, overcame nearly insurmountable obstacles to enter religious life. By 1900, most white orders had formal admission policies prohibiting US-born black women and girls from membership, and these persisted well into the 1970s.5 The partial and selective integration of black women into white communities during the 1960s and 1970s often meant only one or two black members were admitted at a time.6 As was the case for the Sisters of Notre Dame, many of the first black sisters within predominantly white religious orders eventually defected from religious life in response to the slow pace of change and intractable racism they experienced.7 These dynamics have shifted in recent decades. Although nine out of ten Catholic sisters in the United States are white and non-Hispanic/Latina, 42 percent currently in religious formation are women of color.8 The racial and ethnic composition of women choosing religious life in the United States closely mirrors the youngest generation of American Catholics in the church.9 As these women in formation, few in number, enter largely white European American institutes, it remains to be seen how the organizations will respond and to what extent these communities will reflect their growing diversity. In 1982, Marie Augusta Neal, a Harvard-educated sociologist and Sister of Notre Dame de Namur from Boston, was one of the first scholars to study empirical changes in religious life through her nationwide study of Catholic sisters in the United States. While focusing attention on broad changes in society and the church, Neal also pointed to internal practices that contributed to declining vocations. These included the requirements for candidates to possess some college or work experience, the failure of sisters to reach out to new immigrants, and the lack of direct contact between sisters and young Catholic women in post–Vatican II ministries.10 After Neal’s research, most studies of Catholic sisters in the United States focused on falling membership in women’s religious orders through the framework of organizational decline.11 Sociologist and former sister Helen Rose Ebaugh persuasively argues that as social and educational opportunities for women increase, religious orders are less attractive options for women. She identifies a number of important shifts that have led to a decline in US vocations, including changes in the opportunity structures available to young women in an advanced industrial society, the decline of the parochial school system that served as the recruiting base for religious orders, and changes in the age requirements for recruits. Before second-wave feminism, sisters were one of the few groups of women who demonstrated to Catholic girls growing up in

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immigrant communities that women could be competent professionals in various career settings. They also provided a model of single women living out an alternative to marriage and family in a society where the roles of wife and mother are normative.12 American women now have more diverse opportunities to pursue careers whether they are single or married and to engage in various types of humanitarian or religious work without taking religious vows.13 Looking at global trends using data from the Vatican and United Nations World Economic Reports, Ebaugh extends her argument transnationally, concluding that the opportunity structures for women in a society are broadly related to the growth or decline of religious orders.14 Other studies of religious life challenge the importance of changing professional and social opportunities for women in society. Because men’s religious orders experienced similar declines in membership following Vatican II, sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke reject any gender-based explanations for the smaller number of people becoming priests, nuns, or monks.15 They argue that Vatican II lowered the incentives and rewards of religious vocation for both men and women while maintaining its high costs: vows of celibacy, obedience, and poverty. According to this perspective, council documents undermined the special status of being a priest or sister by emphasizing that all Christians are called to holiness through baptism (Lumen Gentium) and that religious should be full participants in the secular world (Gaudium et Spes).16 Without the “special holiness” once attached to a religious vocation, the sacrifices associated with the vows began to outweigh the benefits of membership, resulting in a negative costbenefit ratio for those considering this life.17 Stark and Finke argue, “Doing the work of a teacher, nurse, or social worker as a sister was never seen as having special religious rewards.”18 Other aspects of sisters’ vocations, however, such as living separately in a religious community, participating in daily mass and prayers within that community, and wearing a habit were important in distinguishing sisters from other Catholic laypeople and drawing women to religious life. Today, there are approximately 1,200 women in religious formation in the United States.19 They are older, have completed higher levels of education, and are more racially, ethnically, and nationally diverse than previous generations of Catholic sisters in formation.20 Moving beyond debates over the reasons for declining membership in women’s religious orders, recent research finds American Catholic women are less interested in becoming sisters or remaining Catholic than in the 1950s.21 According to a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), 8 percent of Catholic women born after 1981 have considered a religious vocation at

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least “a little seriously,” and 250,000 Catholic women who never married have “very seriously” considered becoming a sister at some point in their lives.22 Those who have attended Catholic school; personally know a sister, brother, or priest; or have been invited to consider religious life appear more likely to consider a religious vocation.23 Women who have attended a Catholic elementary school are three times more likely to consider becoming a sister than those who do not.24 The recent growth in vocations from non-Western countries is also contributing to the diversity of sisters in the United States. In the first study of international sisters in the US, sociologist and Sister of Notre Dame Mary Johnson and her colleagues identified more than four thousand international sisters from at least eighty-three countries in the United States for formation, study, or ministry.25 While it is likely that overall membership in Catholic women’s religious orders will continue to decline despite stable or increasing vocations in some regions, understanding women’s pathways to religious life in different places sheds light on the social, cultural, and historical factors that lead women to choose this lifestyle over time.26 Current scholarship finds that less industrialized nations, where opportunities for women remain limited and birth rates remain high, are not experiencing the same organizational declines as developing countries.27 Still, very little is known about the distinctive niche that religious orders occupy in these places or the reasons young women consider religious life in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Catholicism is entwined with its colonial past.

Pathways to Religious Life in Greater Boston Catholic Schools Ninety-five percent of the Boston and Ipswich provinces’ membership in 2012 had joined the congregation prior to 1980. Between the 1940s and 1970s, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur ran numerous primary and secondary schools across the greater Boston area. Reflecting their strong presence as teachers throughout the region, the majority of the sisters I spoke with first encountered the congregation in either elementary or high school. As these women related the stories of why they decided to become Sisters of Notre Dame, most explained they wanted to be like the sisters who taught them. “A lot of people have these horror stories of Catholic school,” shared Sr. Maureen, a sixty-five-year-old chaplain. “Mine wasn’t horror. You know, I loved the sisters, and I think I wanted to be like them.” Sr. Vivian,

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an eighty-two-year-old pastoral minister who attended the Notre Dame Academy in Roxbury, remembers watching the sisters play with younger children on her way home from school: “They’d laugh with them while playing with the jump rope, and the kids were happy. And so I said, ‘Gee, they’re happy.’ . . . So I recognized their own joy. They were strict as teachers, but they were excellent teachers. I had thought that I wanted to be a Franciscan [because] there is a lot of Franciscan stuff in my family, and ultimately, decided on . . . Sisters of Notre Dame because of the sisters I had as teachers.” The stories of Sr. Maureen and Sr. Vivian were not unusual. The majority of sisters I spoke with remembered joining the congregation because of the meaningful relationships they had with their teachers during high school. While some sisters described the qualities they observed and respected among the Sisters of Notre Dame at their schools, others focused on the important influence of a particular teacher they admired who made them stop and say, “I think I would like to be a Sister of Notre Dame.” Sr. Judy, a seventy-two-year-old immigration case manager who had attended an elementary school run by a different religious congregation, was struck by how friendly the Sisters of Notre Dame were on her first day of high school. She remembers going home to her mother and telling her, “Do you know the sisters talked to us and took us around and showed us the building and gave us cookies and juice? They [the other group of sisters] never talk[ed] to us at school.” Throughout high school, Judy’s teachers were always available to help students with work after school, and it was the first time she had the opportunity to get to know sisters personally. They left a lasting impression on her as approachable, conscientious, and engaged women who cared about their work and the lives of their students. “I just loved the Sisters of Notre Dame from the beginning,” Sr. Judy explained. “I loved that they reached out to people, and I loved just the picture they gave me of who they were: very interested women, concerned about everything about us, their students.” Sr. Maura, age eighty-two, was educated by Sisters of Notre Dame from elementary school on but was most strongly influenced by those who taught her during high school. After finishing eighth grade, Sr. Maura and her friends were reluctant to go to the nearby St. Gregory High School because they had observed students changing at the subway station into unappealing black uniforms with matching black stockings and shoes. At her home parish of St.  Mark, Maura learned the Sisters of Notre Dame had reopened a high school on Broadway Street where you were not required to wear uniforms. She planned a group visit with her friends. The principal at the renovated Saints Peter and Paul High School was a charismatic

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sister who spent hours with the eleven girls, taking them on a tour of the building and introducing them to a few of the teachers. “The one thing I noticed,” remembers Sr. Maura, “was that they were much younger sisters than the sisters I had in elementary, and they smiled and they laughed a lot more. They made a big impression on this whole group.” Sr.  Maura described the four years she spent at Saints Peter and Paul High School: They were four very, very happy years in my life. The sisters whom we had were cheerful, radiant, sort of young and, you know, came on buses to basketball games, came to us down the field when we played softball, and all that kind of thing. . . . What I felt as I was in my senior year was these sisters are living their lives very happily. They’re happy with what they’re doing with us, teaching us, you know, educating us. And they smile very often, and they often were heard to say to us, “Is there anything I can do for you? Please don’t hesitate to ask me.”

Like so many of the women I spoke with who recalled a beloved elementary or high school teacher they wanted to emulate, Maura admired the sister who taught literature and French. She radiated a certain beauty and wholeness in addition to a “regular-person kind of thing.” Over sixty-five years later, Maura does not remember if this sister approached her or if she approached the sister about entering religious life. Sr. Maura does remember that when she told her favorite teacher she was considering becoming a Sister of Notre Dame, her teacher was delighted. Following high school graduation in August 1947, Maura entered the congregation with twentysix other young women. Consistent with the theology and practices of the time, the sisters teaching, coaching, and leading after-school activities in Notre Dame schools during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s wore traditional habits and lived according to a strict Holy Rule.28 Nonetheless, the older sisters I talked with remembered their teachers as whole people who were living full lives rather than the distant, intimidating, or otherworldly figures that pre–Vatican II images of religious life might suggest. Impressed by their teachers as people and educators, young women also observed sisters in respected institutional leadership positions. For Sr.  Pam, a seventy-one-year-old educator, Sisters of Notre Dame were not only excellent teachers and role models but also capable administrators who showed concern for each member of their community: “I think that the leadership among the sisters was very obvious to me all the way through school because they were the principals,

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they were the teachers, and they helped one another. If a new sister came on the faculty, you knew that others were working with her to help that sister become a better teacher. There were so many different ways in which I think I was influenced in my own understanding of religious life and what it meant.” Considering the more limited options available to young women in the late 1940s and 1950s—in the words of another sister, “nursing, teaching, and marriage”—such examples of women’s institutional leadership, ongoing education and training, and community support were formative. Catholic Colleges It was less common for women who had attended public schools or were taught by other religious congregations in primary and secondary school to join the Sisters of Notre Dame before 1980. Sr. Dorothy, age eighty-seven, and Sr. Bridget, age seventy-one, attended Girls Latin School, a public college preparatory school for girls in Boston, at different times. Both had remote thoughts of religious life earlier. “I sensed when I was in high school that I was being called to religious life,” explained Sr. Bridget, “but I had only been to public school, never to Catholic school, so I thought it was strange I was having these perceptions.” Sr. Dorothy had a bad experience at an elementary school run by another group of sisters and was not interested in joining the order with which she was most familiar. Although curious about religious life, she felt she “needed to know more about the sisters.” Deciding they needed more personal experience with sisters before making up their minds about the future, both women went on to study at Emmanuel College, where they had Sisters of Notre Dame as teachers for the first time. Comparing her instructors at Emmanuel to those she had at Girls Latin, Sr. Bridget was most impressed by what she describes as the “quality of being” among Sisters of Notre Dame: I decided within myself I was certainly going to wait until I met these Sisters of Notre Dame at Emmanuel College. So my first impressions of some of the sisters were very positive, and I saw that the difference in their quality of being [pauses] was something very attractive. Now, at Latin School, I had some teachers who were better teachers, but they lacked this quality of being that I interpreted as coming from their life. And I said, “Hmm, I’m going to go for that quality, I think.” You know? . . . They were interested in the students as persons in addition to what the subject matter was. The dean of the college at the time used to give lectures to all freshmen on Cardinal

96 / Chapter Four John Henry Newman inside the university. And she was so well read, and she always spoke with a smile. You could tell she just loved being who she was, the way she was. And I said, “Oh, that is the kind of a person I want to be— intelligent, well read, but embracing of others.”

Similar to the young women who admired Sisters of Notre Dame in elementary or high school, those who encountered members of the order for the first time in college shared the impression that these women were socially and intellectually engaged people, fulfilled in their lives and the work they were doing. Women who decided to enter the congregation because of their college professors hoped to develop the same qualities they appreciated in these educators. Supportive Irish Catholic Communities Although becoming a sister in many Irish American neighborhoods of Boston before 1970 was not unusual, young women still frequently dealt with the opposition or anguish of their parents before and after they entered. As described in the opening of the chapter, Sr. Lynn’s mother insisted that good Polish girls did not become sisters. When Sr. Elaine, age eighty-four, told her parents she wanted to enter the convent in 1947, her mother compared religious vocation to a disease that ran in some families but definitely not their family. Sr. Alice’s father thought his youngest daughter’s interest in religious life was simply “bizarre.” After Alice, age sixty-two, was called back by the provincial for a second entrance interview in 1968 her mother—who was more supportive of the decision—confided, “Well, you know why [you were called back]? Because your father told them, ‘I don’t know how you expect her to take a vow of obedience. She would never know what the word meant!’” However, many Sisters of Notre Dame did, in fact, belong to families with long histories of religious vocation and had siblings who also joined religious orders. Whether or not these vocations were a hereditary condition, as Sr.  Elaine’s mother suggested, most members did follow in the footsteps of close friends, classmates, or family members who had also chosen this path. Throughout the largely Irish Catholic communities where Boston sisters were raised, religious vocations carried high social status and were deeply respected. While members often focused on the influence of teachers, the important roles they played in their lives were clearly framed by broader institutional, communal, and theological support for becoming a sister across the schools, neighborhoods, and churches where women

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first encountered members of the order. It was within the context of supportive social networks and a robust parochial school system that choosing religious life made sense to so many young women in Greater Boston. Sr. Maureen grew up in what she describes as a traditional Irish Catholic neighborhood where church was an important part of community life and religious vocation was portrayed as a higher calling. As a child, Maureen was active in church activities and explained, “When I entered in the ’60s you got a lot of good strokes for becoming a sister. [It was] something that was valued highly in society at that time, and lots of my friends had entered.” Sr. Maureen came face-to-face with a surprising example of her early perceptions of religious life when she gained access to an old questionnaire she completed when entering the order. In response to a question about why she wanted to enter religious life, Maureen had written, “to save my soul.” Staring at the paper, Sr. Maureen was shocked: “I looked at it and said, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe those were my words and my handwriting.’ But it was like a totally different theology that I had as a child and adolescent.” Sr.  Bridget remembered being influenced by how priests would “often talk in sermons about choosing the higher good and accepting a vocation to the sisterhood or the priesthood.” She had an aunt who was a Sister of Notre Dame, and even though the aunt died when Bridget was very young, she noticed that her father’s family held her in high esteem. Sr. Pam was raised in a family that was very sympathetic to local sisters. Her parents referred to them as the “poor sisters” because they did not receive all the advantages that priests did. Along with other members of the parish, her parents would bring extra goods or “treats” to the local convent to express their appreciation. Despite this supportive environment and Pam’s love for her first-grade teacher, she did not want anyone to know she would ever think of becoming a sister until high school, when she heard her friends discussing their interest in religious life. Suddenly, the possibility became real for her: “In high school, when all the friends were saying they were interested in becoming a sister, I’d say, ‘Oh, wow, this is something people actually do.’” Soon, two of her best friends entered; one went to the Dominicans and the other to the Sisters of Notre Dame. The parents of the Notre Dame novice invited Pam to come with them to see her on visiting day. From that point on, her future in the congregation seemed certain. Throughout my conversations with Sisters of Notre Dame in Greater Boston, the names of certain parishes, especially those in South Boston and Dorchester, came up time and time again. I soon learned that parishes were an important way of identifying one’s background when speak-

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ing with sisters in the two provinces.29 The power of parish narratives also became evident in the comments of members who grew up outside the neighborhoods where most local sisters were raised. At the mention of South Boston, Sr. Dorothy practically rolled her eyes at me: “I have not got that South Boston commitment in my blood. . . . I was not part of that parish life, and I came from a parish in Brighton . . . So when they tell these old-time stories about parishes, I have to tune it out, and I’m glad I do.” Other stories still seemed raw. Unlike the predominantly Irish American backgrounds of most members, Sr.  Michelle, a sixty-seven-year-old educational director, was raised in a different tight-knit immigrant community near Boston where religion was a strong part of her family tradition and ethnic heritage. At that time, the Sisters of Notre Dame were deeply embedded in the fabric of her community, and they became like an extended family for her: “My grandmother lived across the street and family friends who owned a grocery store would give sisters food and produce. It was a very friendly kind of an atmosphere so I was never afraid of the sisters. They were very open and welcoming and almost like an extended family. . . . I guess I was very comfortable with them.” Despite this childhood familiarity and comfort with Sisters of Notre Dame, when I asked Sr. Michelle what it was like to join a primarily Irish American religious community, she looked momentarily surprised and then smiled. Sr. Michelle told me it was hard and shared the story of her mother sending loaves of a special traditional bread to the convent after her daughter entered. Sr.  Michelle’s mother had baked enough bread for the entire community, but when she began to share it with other sisters, they did not know what it was or how to eat it. She watched with surprise as community members covered the bread in tomato sauce and began eating it like pizza. Sr. Michelle did not speak up to tell them this was not how you eat the bread, and “they never asked.” As the memory flickered across Sr. Michelle’s face like an old wound, she explained that she never shared this story with her mother because it would have hurt her feelings. A “Natural” Choice In Greater Boston, a combination of different factors—the presence of sisters in local schools and neighborhoods, the many friends and peers who entered religious life, and the status attached to vocations within these communities and churches—encouraged young women to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. At the same time, young women had fewer

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competing social, educational, and professional alternatives to consider while making the decision. As Sr.  Lana, who graduated from the Notre Dame Academy in Roxbury in 1958, explained, “When it came time for me to graduate, the options were ‘you go to nursing,’ ‘you’re a teacher,’ ‘you get married,’ whatever, and I think at that time I was thinking, ‘Is that all there is?’” Lana held a number of leadership positions during high school as president of student government and a member of the drama club and basketball team as well as various other school groups. At some point, becoming a sister seemed like a “natural” choice based on her experiences. Sr. Lana recalled a moment of reflection during her junior or senior year that crystallized her decision to enter Notre Dame: A couple of them [the sisters] were very down to earth and real and said, “It’s wonderful to have a married life.” I thought of my sisters and people who were in my family, happily married, having children—babies—and I was the youngest of the six, and I was doing a lot of observation. So I had that to think about. Then I heard the explanation from one of the sisters saying . . . people who enter religious life are free for everyone, and that’s how she interpreted for us the whole vow of celibacy and chastity. And I thought, “Wow, free for everybody,” because I was president of student government. I was already available to everybody in the school in terms of leadership, and I thought, “Gee, it would be natural for me to try it.”

Such narratives are consistent with Helen Rose Ebaugh’s argument that Catholic girls who chose religious life in the 1940s and ’50s had fewer opportunity structures when discerning the future.30 They grew up in communities that respected sisters and entrusted them with the education of their children. At church and at school, these young women were taught that religious vocation was a higher calling to serve God and others. Nearing high school graduation, they watched friends and peers enter the Sisters of Notre Dame in significant numbers and believed if they entered, they too would spend their lives in a growing community of like-minded women, teaching in strong Catholic institutions. Against this backdrop, religious life seemed to promise a secure and meaningful future. “I entered into—I thought at the time—an organization that was relatively unchanging,” reflected Sr. Bridget, “There were a thousand sisters in Massachusetts at that time, in thriving colleges and high schools and grammar schools. And I thought we would always be growing, you know, we would be this huge army. And then everything happened with Vatican II that changed that.”

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Choosing Religious Life after Vatican II After the reforms of the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, the stories of how and why Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur entered the congregation began to change. A forward-looking order, many members were at the forefront of the renewal efforts associated with Vatican II, particularly within Greater Boston. The early 1970s marked an especially turbulent period for the congregation, which shaped the experiences of those entering at that time. Although vocations were just beginning to decline, these events immediately influenced decisions and social support for entering religious life. Sr. Anne, age sixty, grew up in Dorchester and was educated by the Sisters of St.  Joseph in elementary school and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in high school. As we sat talking in the backyard of her childhood home on a sunny day in March, Sr. Anne pointed over the rooftops of the neighboring houses: “The elementary school is right behind there, and then a mile away from that is the high school I went to.” Although Sr. Anne does not remember feeling called to the Sisters of Notre Dame specifically, she did feel called to religious life because of two teachers who were important influences in her life, one in elementary school and one in high school. During her senior year of high school, the freshman homeroom teacher Sr. Anne admired encouraged her to think about religious life, but she resisted the suggestion and went off to college convinced, “No, this is not for me.” At some point in college, Anne began to reconsider, thinking, “Oh, she was probably right,” and decided to write to both of the orders that educated her. She laughed as she said, “I wrote to the Sisters of St. Joseph and I wrote to the Sisters of Notre Dame, not knowing the slightest bit of difference between the two of them.” In 1971, so many sisters were leaving the Sisters of St. Joseph that the order was not accepting any new members. Undeterred, Anne went ahead with her plans and entered the Sisters of Notre Dame, but she remembers a few of her friends saying to her, “Anne, you’re going the wrong way. Everybody is leaving, and you are going in!” After Sr.  Anne entered the congregation, she continued to experience the uncertainty of the period. In 1971, a group of sisters in Boston petitioned the congregational leadership in Rome, asking to form a separate province. Sisters were placed into groups A, B, or C depending on the residence where they lived, and each community adopted a slightly different lifestyle. Still in formation, Sr. Anne belonged to the larger Massachusetts province rather than one of the subgroups. Religious life was changing so much and so quickly that instead of living in community, as novices typi-

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cally did, Sr. Anne was sent to do a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) experience through the state hospitals. Sr. Anne speculated, “We were not sent into community because—I think it was martyrdom [there]. I don’t know. Because of the intensity of what was going on, we were sent  .  .  . to state hospitals for the mentally ill and did CPE instead of a community experience, which I think is sort of symbolic of where we were at that point.” Living through this unsettled period as a young sister, Sr. Anne has no regrets and believes that these experiences prepared her for the dynamic nature of religious life after Vatican II: I wouldn’t change any of it. I think what my formation taught me is that change is a constitutive element of religious life whereas I think [for] sisters that entered in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, there wasn’t much change. . . . For me, from the beginning, change was constant and still is. . . . But I also grew up in a society that was constantly changing. I mean, I grew up during the Vietnam War, and civil rights, and the farmworkers’ boycotts, and all that kind of thing. So that had an extreme impact on my life, I think. You get called at the right time. I believe that too.

Much like Sr.  Anne’s experience with the Sisters of St.  Joseph, when Sr. Genie wrote to the Sisters of the Holy Child after high school graduation, she found out the order that educated her would not be accepting any novices in the coming year because everything was in transition. Believing that she had said yes to God’s call and God had answered no, Genie continued her education at a state college. She thought to herself, “‘I’m clear. I am home free.’ Went to college. Had a great time!” During Genie’s sophomore year, two Sisters of Notre Dame appeared on campus. “You couldn’t miss them,” she remembers, “because they were in little black dresses with little white collars and little white veils.” Even though there were only two sisters on campus, it seemed to Sr.  Genie that they were everywhere. By Genie’s junior year, more than thirty Sisters of Notre Dame were attending Salem State, arriving by bus every day. One sister ended up in her measurements course: My junior year, second semester, one Sister of Notre Dame ended up in a class with me. Now, by this time, there was now a busload of Sisters of Notre Dame novices, coming to Salem State. This was a group that decided not to go to Emmanuel, which is our college, but [to] come to Salem. So this busload would arrive every day, and thirty-some-odd young sisters would get off the bus and head to the library. They literally took over the library.

102 / Chapter Four Well, the second semester, junior year, and one sister landed in my class. It was a test and measurements class, and everybody hated it, and he wasn’t a good teacher. By junior year I had my group that I was hanging with, and we were all in the back of the room. This one little sister was right up front, and nobody sat around her. So I began to feel badly about it, and I said, “Oh, this is not good.” I said, “I really don’t have anything against the sister.” . . . I brought my crowd, and we moved up. And that was it. She turned around one day, and the sisters all were wearing Timex testers, and she couldn’t get the little sleeve in underneath the little band. And so, she just asked if I could do it and . . . that was it.

At age sixty-two, Sr.  Genie remembers this day in 1971 very clearly. After she helped the Sister of Notre Dame with her Timex tester watch, they began to talk, and Genie shared her experience with the Sisters of the Holy Child. The Sister of Notre Dame asked her if she would consider religious life again. Sr.  Genie was dating someone very seriously at the time and shook her head: “No, no.” Sr. Genie entered the Sisters of Notre Dame that September and did not return to college for her senior year until after becoming a novice. While preparing for her entrance interview, Sr.  Genie found a book of religious orders in her family’s attic, which she had been given as a Catholic high school student. Flipping through the pages, Genie was surprised to see that her younger self had highlighted the Sisters of Notre Dame and written in the margins, “Great charism. Terrific saint. Hate the habit.” Sr. Genie still agrees with those first high school impressions: “It was an ugly habit . . . but that wasn’t important at that point [1971] because they weren’t in the habit anymore.” Her initial admiration for St. Julie Billiart only grew when she entered. “She was known as the smiling saint, and part of her spirituality was simplicity and joy and teaching,” explained Sr. Genie. “It kind of defined everything that I had been up to that point in my life. . . . So that was a little bit scary when I saw that.” Despite the changing experiences of sisters who entered in the early 1970s, most still attended Catholic school and formed personal relationships with sisters as young people. By 1980, this pathway to religious life had shifted. In 2012, only fifteen of the members of the Boston and Ipswich provinces had joined the congregation following 1980, and their stories are qualitatively different from those who came before them. Unlike those who entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur between 1940 and 1977, these women were “seekers” who actively sought out information about religious orders and opportunities to get to know sisters. In contrast

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to previous generations, most seekers did not have personal experiences with sisters in their schools, neighborhoods, or colleges but researched and met with women from different congregations because they felt drawn to religious life. Most attended public high schools, and for this small group of women, neither religious life nor the Sisters of Notre Dame seemed a probable choice. Becoming a sister required careful explanation to friends and family, and it meant pursuing a vocation that few contemporaries were choosing. Sisters in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s entered in large groups, often with close friends or schoolmates; those in the 1970s entered with at least a few other local women. But women who have joined the Sisters of Notre Dame in the past four decades have begun formation with few if any other novices across all the US provinces.

Sr. Claudia was in Atlanta packing for a move back to Boston, where she had accepted a new job, when she came across a copy of the Archdiocese of Boston newsletter, the Boston Pilot. Picking up the paper, which she had saved from her most recent trip to the city, Claudia looked down and noticed a feature on the Sisters of Mercy. She suddenly thought to herself, “I could be a nun. I could be a sister.” “That is it—out of the blue,” Sr. Claudia told me the first time we talked in the kitchen of her community in Somerville. With a successful career in business, Claudia had been in a number of serious relationships, turned down a marriage proposal, and decided in her early thirties that she did not want biological children. Raised Catholic, Claudia had been active in various parish groups over time but had little exposure to religious life and had never before considered becoming a sister. She explained, I didn’t go to Catholic school or high school, elementary school. Nothing. I  didn’t go to a Catholic university, so I thought, “Wow.”  .  .  . And then I drove. I sent my things, but I decided that I wasn’t going to send my car, that I was going to drive from Atlanta to Boston . . . So I had a lot of time to think about it. When I got here to Boston, I said, “That’s ridiculous! That is crazy as well.” So that’s it, it went away and, a couple of months later, came back. I said, “That is wrong, that doesn’t make any sense.” I would fight it and then it would come back.

Sr. Claudia settled into her new job in Boston that March, and every time the idea of becoming a sister came back, she fought it. Despite her doubts, Claudia held on to the newspaper article. Before the end of the year, she

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sat down at her computer to find a phone number for the Sisters of Mercy. Through online research, Sr.  Claudia realized the order was located in Rhode Island. With some trepidation, she picked up her cell phone and made her first call. She told the sister who answered the phone, “You know, I have this idea, and I don’t know what to do with it, and I just need to talk to someone.” Sr. Claudia remembers this first exchange with a Catholic sister warmly: “She was so generous and came from Rhode Island [to meet me]. We met in Needham, and she asked me, ‘What kind of order would you like to enter?’” Claudia was confused. “What do you mean? A nun order,” she replied. The sister asked her again, “But what kind of order? .  .  .  There are apostolic orders and there are cloistered orders.” Claudia realized that she had a lot to learn about Catholic religious life. The Sister of Mercy recommended that she take some time to read about different types of religious institutes and find a spiritual director. She emailed Claudia a list of recommendations after their meeting. When Claudia opened up the email, she said to herself, “Ah, this is ridiculous!” and did not look at it again for three months. When the idea of becoming a sister returned to Claudia, she began to search online again, learning more about different orders. At first, the idea of wearing a habit was very appealing. She thought to herself, “Oh, that would be so cool to wear a habit! You know, I really want to wear a habit.” After looking at the list of nine spiritual directors from the Sisters of Mercy, Claudia decided to call three and meet with the first person who returned her call. One of the spiritual directors on the list was also named Claudia, so she decided to call her. Three hours later, this Sister of Notre Dame de Namur called her back, marking the beginning of her relationship with the order. The sister on the other end of the phone became Claudia’s spiritual director, and as they began to meet monthly, she felt her relationship with God start to change. Sr. Claudia explained, “I went from [it] being the God that is out there to . . . the everyday God that was all the time with me.” At times, she would tell God to leave her alone—“This is not for me!” As God became a nagging daily presence in her life, Sr. Claudia’s most-used phrase became “God, you have to be kidding me!” Some days, she gave God a list of all her excuses: “I’m too old. I’m not a good person. I’m terrible. I’m a sinner. I’m not even a virgin. Go on and go for someone else that is a good woman. . . . I’m too old.” Other days she told God the opposite: “I’m a good person. I don’t have anyone. Why can’t I just continue my life the way it is?” Sometimes Claudia would disappear from spiritual direction for a few months, but

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every time, something would propel her back. When she returned, her spiritual director would never raise an eyebrow or say, “Oh, look who is here? Wow, where have you been?” Instead, she would welcome her back and say, “I’m glad you are here.” This made a lasting impression on Claudia. The back-and-forth continued for a few years. “Finally, I said yes,” Claudia explained. “I do remember, I said, ‘OK, God, I’m going to do it.’ Automatically I felt a peace that I have never felt in my entire life. It was very special.” It took Claudia a year to complete the process to enter. She needed medical exams and three recommendation letters, including one from a priest, one from a sister, and one from a coworker. There was an involved psychological evaluation and several interviews. After Sr. Claudia was accepted as an affiliate, or what would have been known in the past as a postulant, she moved into a Notre Dame community near her workplace. At the time, she was a manager at a large company. During the transition, she decided not to tell anyone at her job because she was concerned her new lifestyle would influence how other coworkers perceived her. Claudia lived in community for three years rather than the usual two before becoming a novice, keeping her finances separate and paying for room and board while contributing to community life through cooking and other responsibilities in the house. At the end of her third year, she made a retreat and submitted her resignation letter at the company where she worked. Uncertain of how her coworkers would respond after learning about her decision to become a sister, Claudia was surprised by how supportive the other managers were. Only one person at the company told her she was crazy. Most seemed deeply moved by her decision, calling her and emailing her with prayer requests and personal stories of faith and spirituality. As a novice, Sr. Claudia did a canonical year focused on prayer, spirituality, and discernment in Cincinnati. After completing this, she began her ministry year working primarily with undocumented immigrants. With so few women entering the congregation in recent years, it is difficult to describe patterns of new membership among Sisters of Notre Dame. In light of dramatic demographic and organizational changes in recent decades, seekers like Sr.  Claudia are swimming upstream against the social current as they make the decision to join a religious order. Unlike previous cohorts of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, new members usually became interested in religious life before developing close relationships with sisters. Like Sr. Claudia, they often research or explore several possible religious congregations before making a decision. Sr.  Lisa, age forty-seven, remembers visiting six potential communities in the late 1990s before choosing Notre Dame.

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Sr.  Jo, a sixty-year-old social worker by training, entered the order in 1981. Growing up the eldest of six in a close-knit Catholic family in Boston, Jo had extended family members who were sisters. Although she did not know them well, she does remember her grandmother taking her to a convent for visiting days as a young child. With a strong interest in living a life of service and “being a change agent,” Sr. Jo began considering religious life after high school. Determined to study social work, she decided to put herself through college first. After completing her degree, Sr. Jo began working at a hospital and paying off her college debt. One evening while driving home from a wedding shower, Sr. Jo started talking to God about her desire to enter religious life: “You know, God, it shouldn’t really come down to money . . . This is a big decision. I’ve been trying to go in this direction for some time, and now all that is holding me back from making this decision are the loans that I owe back, particularly to my aunt (who had given me money to get me through school at different points).” As Sr. Jo drove by her mother’s house, she noticed the lights were still on and dropped in for a cup of tea. While putting a kettle on, her mother started talking about how her aunt had been at the house that evening. “We were talking about you,” she told her daughter. Sr.  Jo listened as she prepared the tea. “Oh, I hope you were saying good things.” Her mother continued, “Well, Aunt Lee said she hoped that you realize she never expects to have any of that money back that she lent you when you were in school.” Suddenly Sr.  Jo felt the hair on her arms stand straight up, and she stopped her mother. “I got to go.” Thinking back on the experience, Sr. Jo told me, “I couldn’t even really explain it to my mother.” The conversation was a sign—confirmation that she was going in the right direction—and the encouragement she needed to pursue a religious vocation. Before choosing the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Sr.  Jo explored a number of different communities. Although initially interested in wearing a habit, over time, outward recognition for being a sister seemed less important. Jo talked with sisters who had worn the habit in the past but found that it could get in the way of being able to really engage with people. Reflecting on the reasons she eventually chose the order, Jo explained, “The thing that was attractive to me, the one thing I really did find [attractive] about them, is they knew how to have a good time. They were real human beings.” While Sr. Jo did not have Sisters of Notre Dame as teach-

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ers, she noticed them at local Irish pubs when she went out dancing with her girlfriends. She remembered, “Some of the sisters would be there for at least a portion of the evening. And they liked to dance. It was a lot of great fun. I just used to think to myself, ‘If they know how to have a good time together and they do good work . . . [then] this is somebody I’d like to cast my lot with,’ you know?” As the institutional pathways that once led American women to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur disappear, the story of becoming a sister often sounds like a tale of serendipity and chance encounters. With a declining number of sisters in the US, fewer Catholic girls are taught by sisters or encounter them in parish life. Members of the congregation are still grappling with the meaning of this organizational uncertainty and an aging membership. As Helen Rose Ebaugh’s work points out, young women now enjoy a wide range of social, professional, and occupation opportunities. Becoming a sister is a choice that looks increasingly radical when viewed from the outside, even as the religious identities and lifestyles of sisters become less distinct.31 The structural, communal, and theological support that once made becoming a sister a highly valued and respected alternative to marriage and family has fractured, making life as a Sister of Notre Dame a more precarious decision that very few are encouraged to consider.

Pathways to Religious Life in the Congo-Kinshasa Province The Democratic Republic of Congo has the largest number of Catholics on the African continent and the tenth-largest number of Catholics globally.32 Forty-seven percent of the population–31 million people–identify as Catholic, and the number of religious sisters in the country has grown by 21 percent in ten years.33 Despite the strength and vitality of Congolese Catholicism, local women have never experienced the same social support for entering religious life as sisters in the West during vocational peaks in the middle of the twentieth century. The first formation house for Sisters of Notre Dame in Congo opened its doors in Kisantu in 1959. Recounted in chapter 2, the young Congolese women who entered the order at the height of the national independence movement faced contempt from outside the community and distrust from within it. As African independence movements swept the continent and Congolese struggled to break free of Belgian control, some local observers interpreted the decision to join a European religious congregation as a betrayal of nationalist aspirations. Within the convent, novices were asked to adopt European mentalities, leaderships, attitudes, habits, diets, and ways of dress. This colonial rela-

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tionship persisted between Congolese and Belgian sisters after the country’s independence in 1961 and only began to shift when the Congolese province gained its autonomy from Belgian sisters in 1975.34 Not only did the first local sisters endure the ethnocentrism of the missionaries who formed them, but they also faced opposition from their families for giving up the valued roles of mother and wife. Although Catholic sisters have achieved greater visibility and influence in the Democratic Republic of Congo over time, the stigma of celibacy persists almost a century later. Across generations, the sisters I talked with encountered resistance to their religious vocation among family members, extended kin, and peers who could not comprehend their choice. The experience was especially painful for older sisters who entered before independence, who recalled parents, uncles, and aunts united in their opposition. Most middle-aged and young sisters described a patchwork of support and resistance to the idea of becoming a sister within their immediate families similar to that experienced by American sisters. They often spoke of one parent who encouraged their religious vocation, while another initially resisted the decision or accepted it after a long struggle. It was not unusual for sisters to have an extended family member who was a priest, sister, or brother, and some had parents who considered religious life before marrying. A few sisters stated matter-of-factly that their parents supported their decision because they were “good Christians,” implying an obligation for devout Catholic families to accept their children’s religious vocations as the will of God. Apart from these similarities, the decision to become a sister had consequences for Congolese women that rippled out across a much broader network of kinship ties. Parents and extended family members argue that sisters are blocking the way for future life and denying them marriage dowries. Sisters’ friends and peers often reinforce this disapproval, assuming that women would only choose the convent if they did not have marriage prospects or were unattractive. The Presence of Sisters in Villages and Schools When Belgian missionary sisters reached the Congo Free State in 1894, they established several missions throughout the western region of the colony that still exist, including in Kisantu (1900), Lemfu (1905), Ngidinga (1928), Mpese (1932), Kitenda (1952), and Pelende (1956). Reflecting the congregation’s strong presence in these areas, the majority of sisters I spoke with were originally from villages in the Bas-Congo or Bandundu regions

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of the country (which now form the Kongo-Central, Kwongo, and Kwilu territorial provinces), and very few grew up in the city of Kinshasa.35 Most women first encountered Sisters of Notre Dame in the villages where they were raised or as teachers in the schools they attended. When Congolese sisters told the stories of their religious vocations, they often wove early memories of village life with experiences at Notre Dame schools as they explained why they “wanted to be like them.” Sr. Simone is forty-eight years old and manages the province’s farmland. Raised in Kisantu, Sr.  Simone first met the Sisters of Notre Dame when she attended a high school run by them and recalls how her teachers would travel to surrounding villages to visit their families during the holidays, giving lessons to the young people who lived there. “I saw what the sisters did,” she explained, “their way of working and their way of being especially attracted me to enter the congregation of SND.” Sr.  Violette, a twenty-two-year-old elementary school teacher, grew up in Pelende, where the example of Sisters of Notre Dame in the village sparked her initial desire to study at a Notre Dame school. Violette was impressed by the simplicity of her teachers and their way of relating to other people. Everywhere the sisters worked, they lived in close proximity to the population and were accessible to those around them. Not unlike their counterparts in Boston, sisters in the Congo-Kinshasa Province often explained the decision to become a sister in terms of a strong desire to emulate one of their teachers. When she was a child, Sr. Bernadette remembers telling her mother what she wanted for her future: “Mother, the feeling I have is that I want to be with many women praying together, working together, and eating in the same place.” At the time, Bernadette’s mother was confused because she did not have much knowledge of sisters or how they lived, so she just listened to her daughter. When Bernadette, who looks much younger than her fifty-one years, met Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur for the first time in primary school, she said to herself, “Ah, this is what I was feeling when I was very young.” There was one sister in particular who Bernadette admired. She remembers, When I saw that sister, I was saying to myself, “I should be like that sister.” One day I met with my friend. I told her, “What can I do to become like that sister?” and my friend said, “I also am asking myself, What can I do to become like that sister?” She told me, “Let us go ask her,” and we went together to ask Sr. Bea. She laughed, and after laughing, she said, “To become like me, there is only one thing: come in our house; you will pray with us, and you will see what we do, and you will do the same.” And we went.

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From that point forward, Bernadette and her friend went every morning and every evening to pray with the sisters. After finishing high school, the two young women wrote to the Sisters of Notre Dame expressing the desire to enter. Both were accepted, and after three years of studying the congregation and the life of St. Julie as an aspirant, Bernadette became a postulant. Sr.  Jacqueline, a forty-seven-year-old principal, was drawn to the first Sister of Notre Dame she met at her elementary school. When Jacqueline was introduced to the school’s principal, she did not realize she was a sister, but she was immediately attracted to her “manner of dressing, way of walking, and way of praying.” She thought to herself, “Me too. I want to become like this woman.” Like many Congolese sisters, Jacqueline noticed how the sister carried herself and physically embodied her vocation, underscoring the ways religious identity may be cultivated and communicated through the nonverbal dimensions of bodies and dispositions  that are often overlooked.36 The City The narratives of the few sisters who grew up in Kinshasa were different than those from other parts of the country. In 1968, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur relocated the provincial house and formation communities from Kisantu to Kimwenza, which occupies a plateau just south of the capital city; it is technically within city limits. Despite this proximity, most sisters refer to trips downtown as “going to Kinshasa,” suggesting a certain distance between Kimwenza and the heart of the capital below. Historically, Sisters of Notre Dame had a limited presence in Kinshasa, and those who grew up there describe how few opportunities they had to meet members of the order. Sr. Aurore was educated by Jesuits until moving to Kisantu for secondary school and explained, “Since childhood, I loved the religious. Before meeting the sisters in Kisantu, my family and I lived in Kinshasa. There, I only saw sisters from afar. Whenever I saw them, I was happy. It was in Kisantu that I encountered them [Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur], and it is in this moment that I made up my mind [that] I wanted to become a religious sister.” Sr. Aurore recalled how the first two sisters she met in Kisantu counseled her and expressed their concern for her success and the success of other students. They treated each student equally, and this made a deep impression on Aurore. The sisters soon became her role models, and “their way of being” attracted her to the life. The few women who grew up in Kinshasa and completed their schooling there met Sisters of Notre Dame after being drawn to religious life.

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Sr. Colette, age forty-six, loved the sisters she met in her parish when going to Mass with her grandparents. During a recollection at the end of high school, she spoke to a Jesuit priest and told him, “I’m looking for a congregation.” The priest gave her the names of three possible congregations but advised her to focus on the Sisters of Notre Dame. Colette had never met a member of the order at church or at school, but she took the priest’s advice seriously and visited the sisters in Kimwenza. The first Sister of Notre Dame who welcomed her to the parlor “had a smiling face” and gave her a book about St. Julie. Colette loved the book and continued to return to the community until she finally asked to enter. Similarly, Sr. Louise, a thirty-six-year-old principal, first felt a call to religious life during childhood even though there was no history of religious vocations in her family. She joined a vocations group in her parish during high school, and when the Jesuit leading the group invited a Sister of Notre Dame to speak, Louise felt a stronger pull to the congregation than to any of the other orders she had been introduced to previously. The sister who spoke invited Louise to come to the convent and pray with her community. Sr.  Louise began visiting Kimwenza regularly and explained afterward, “I could not go anywhere else.” After seven years as a Sister of Notre Dame, Sr.  Louise is happy with the path she chose, but there are still moments when she is aware of the chasm between her quiet lifestyle in the convent and the place where she was raised. “To live this way in a convent astonishes people,” she explained. “Even to come and see you, they don’t like that. [They say] it’s so calm here. When they come, they see calm, [that it’s] a little different. They ask, ‘How do you live here?’ because in Kinshasa, there is movement, there is music.” When I asked Sr. Louise how she responds to these comments, she replied that she tells them, “I’m at ease. I’m at home.” The Vow of Chastity: Severing Cultural and Ethnic Lifelines When Congolese sisters take the religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, they risk betraying local expectations regarding women’s responsibility to produce “riches in human beings” (mbongo bantu) for the clan (kanda) or to “repair the clan” (londa kanda).37 Because procreation and bringing forth future generations is women’s most sacred duty according to traditional Kongolese culture, those without offspring risk living a “sterile” life in the eyes of their communities. Focusing on her identity as an African woman, Sr. Élodie described how the vow of chastity severs cultural and ethnic lifelines most vividly: “For us, procreation is a very, very

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important value. I received life, and I am obliged to give life. It is through marriages and children that I must continue life. But now, I have a block. It is as if I cut off that life, those umbilical cords . . . to transmit life to others.” Although less common, there were also sisters like Maryse, a forty-five-yearold tailor, who never felt the desire to bear children and were drawn to the lifestyle of sisters as an alternative to motherhood. While Maryse did not accept the obligation to have children, her maternal aunts tried to stop her from entering the convent. They believed she was “closing the way” for future generations and warned her, “You will not have children if you go there. Your life will become dry, sterile.” Embedded in dense kinship networks, most members accepted resistance to their religious vocation as a personally difficult but understandable response to choosing a life without biological children, and few questioned the value of fertility for Congolese women. Instead, they differentiated their own desires from family expectations. Framing religious vocation as an individual decision and calling from God enabled sisters to assert personal agency in a deeply communal context and to legitimize a choice that would otherwise be considered selfish and contrary to the interests of the family. Sr. Jacqueline, age forty-seven, explained the opposition of her parents, who both considered entering religious orders before they were married: First of all  .  .  . for an African woman, the goal is to have children. It is to produce, to procreate, fertility, to have children. So [my parents said], “Why must you become a religious? If you become a religious, you will not have children. No, you should get married.” But as I have said, when one has a vocation, when one has decided, that is how it is. I said, “No. You find that I must get married, I must have children, but for me, the Lord is calling me to become a religious. I must become a religious.” Together with the family, we reflected. They understood and said, “Since it’s your vocation, we let you leave.”

Sr. Louise was the first member of her family to join a religious order. As Sr. Louise explained her family’s response, she took for granted the high social value placed on motherhood but argued that it was a personal choice: When I said I wanted to become a religious, everyone was astonished. My mother even cried. It is normal in African culture that a woman give life, that she marry, that she have children. That is it, isn’t it? When I said, “Not that; it is the religious life [for me],” that was difficult for my parents and for other

Pathways to Religious Life for American and Congolese Women / 113 members of the family. “She will not have children. She is going to dedicate herself to God.” They asked me, “How? Why? Who moved you to go there? What’s the matter?” I said that it is my choice. Afterwards, they accepted.

Later when Louise told classmates she was becoming a sister, they were just as shocked and kept asking, “Why? Why?” One of her classmates proposed: “I’ll marry you!” Peers questioned her motivations, but Sr.  Louise was unapologetic, making clear it was her prerogative. “It is something personal,” Sr. Louise told them. “I chose that. You cannot ask me, ‘Why, why are you going to consecrate yourself [and] stay in a convent without having children?’” As sisters cut off their metaphorical umbilical cords, they also severed other social and economic ties binding them to their kin. The sacrifice of future descendants was not the only “loss to the family” associated with religious sisterhood. Marriage has significant economic value in the Democratic Republic of Congo for parents as well as uncles and aunts who share the marriage dowry. Older and younger women faced opposition from relatives who did not want to give up the prospect of this future dowry. Thinking back on her youth, Sr.  Josette, a seventy-four-year-old midwife, remembered, “They [the family] wanted me to get married because there were men who asked for my hand in marriage. They wanted me to get married to have money.” Decades later Sr. Bernadette explained why her uncle was the most vocal critic of her decision: “My uncle, he didn’t accept it. He was saying, ‘You should be married’ . . . because when you marry you receive some gifts, and you receive dowry. ‘We can receive some gifts,’ my uncle said, ‘If you go there, I will come in the convent with my scissors, and I will cut you.’” Although Sr. Bernadette’s uncle eventually accepted her religious vocation, his response illustrates the power that elder kin may exercise over young women’s decisions. The violent imagery of cutting used by both family members and sisters signifies a severing of ethnic kinship ties that requires sisters to rearticulate the meaning of Congolese womanhood for themselves and those closest to them. Constructing Spiritual Motherhood Although sisters’ vows subject them to social ridicule for violating local cultural expectations to bear children and support kin, they devised new strategies to negotiate the connection between womanhood and the maternal role of caregiver and nurturer outside of marriage and fertility. In response to widespread disapproval among family, friends, and community

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members, sisters affirmed their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others through the congregation’s social ministries. Apart from the biological realities of conceiving, gestating, and giving birth to children, mothering involves the performance of a social identity and a “display that constitutes the self as a mother” within a given context.38 Referring to themselves as “mothers of all,” many sisters explicitly rejected the notion that they could not mother within the convent, focusing on the education and moral formation they provide for youth throughout the region. Sr. Henriette, a fortysix-year-old principal, argued, “Even if we have not had children, we have spiritual children. All the children that we take care of, all the children that we educate, those are our children.” Spiritual motherhood enabled sisters to reject the stigma of childlessness while expanding biological notions of motherhood and redefining the space where feminine caregiving is performed, such as in schools, health centers, and other public settings.39 Catholicism offered sisters a rich set of religious resources as they developed alternative maternal identities that were not bound to women’s fertility.40 According to church teachings, even if a woman does not physically bear children, she is encouraged to act as a spiritual mother by nurturing the moral, emotional, and cultural life of others. In Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II argued that caring for humanity is the universal vocation of women and takes on many forms, including concern for “the sick, the handicapped, the abandoned, orphans, the elderly, children, young people, the imprisoned and, in general, people on the edges of society.”41 Vatican II interpretations of the vow of chastity among religious orders further strengthened sisters’ motherhood claims; these now emphasize living for others, free from the commitments of a nuclear family, rather than sexual purity. As Sr. Jacqueline explained, “Celibacy helps me to be a mother to everyone instead of having my own children.” Similarly, Sr.  Aurore, a thirty-two-year-old principal, reflected, “My heart is not given to a single person. I am the sister of everyone, the mother of all children, all people, and the sister of all sisters” Resisting the notion that she would be valued only for her ability to marry and bring children into the world, Sr. Simone told me, “I saw things differently. I saw that in the convent, I would also have children.  .  .  . Sisters are open to everyone. They are not attached to their own children, but all they see are children.”

Conclusions While religious conversion is often portrayed as an individual, solitary, and decontextualized act, sociologist Michal Pagis argues religious self-

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constitution is a relational and embodied process that is just as much about physical presence, material environment, and collective practices as the internalization of religious beliefs or values.42 The narratives of Congolese and American Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur point to the ways in which becoming a Catholic sister is a social and relational experience. In Greater Boston and in villages across Bas-Congo and Bandundu, Catholic schools, missions, and convents have historically provided the physical and institutional setting where young women were introduced to the Sisters of Notre Dame. Most of the women I spoke with would not have chosen religious life without opportunities to meet and form relationships with other women who physically embodied what it meant to be a Sister of Notre Dame through how they related to students, community members, and one another. This was evident when earlier generations of American sisters talked about the quality or “way of being” they observed among their teachers. It was even more striking among Congolese sisters, who often focused on aspects of sisters’ physical comportment, their manner of dressing, way of walking, and way of praying. When I talked with Sr.  Mamy about her work with postulants, she told me, “When I teach them, I have to observe what they are doing. You see where they are going—maybe they are in the chapel, [and] I have to observe also how they are praying, the position they are taking, and the[ir] way of talking. You have to observe them. If, for example, she’s talking to another person like an impolite person, you have to correct them because it is a religious life. You have to purport this way.” Near the end of my stay at the provincial house in Kimwenza, I had the chance to sit down and talk with Sr. Geneviève, the director of novices. Before our conversation ended, she turned to me. “I don’t know if you can talk about this or if it is [in] confidence,” she began, “but I will still ask this question. After, do you think about getting married or becoming a Sister of Notre Dame? . . . To be one of my novices?” I was moved by the careful way Sr. Geneviève posed the question to me and paused for a moment. A part of me feared disappointing her as I explained I was planning to be married the next summer. She nodded. “We follow the news in the United States, and so if you are married, we will always be together. You could be an associate of Notre Dame in the United States even if you are married, so there in another way. . . . There are all kinds of vocations.” Other Congolese sisters made comments about the possibility of me becoming a sister in less formal ways. An American missionary chuckled as she related an exchange that took place during one of her afternoon English sessions. A Congolese sister with whom I had built a good rapport asked the American if I was

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considering becoming a Sister of Notre Dame. When she explained I was planning to be married, the sister exclaimed, “Maybe he is a bad man!” We laughed in the retelling of the story. In Congo, it was much more common for sisters to ask me if I was interested in religious life. In the United States, only one sister brought up the possibility of religious vocation. When meeting the Boston leadership team for the first time, Sr.  Pat told me, “If you know anyone who is interested in joining, let me know. Or if you are interested.  .  .  .  ?” Before I could respond, Sr.  Megan quickly interjected, “No pressure!” After my experiences in Kimwenza, I thought back to these conversations and wondered how many young American women who spend time with sisters in Catholic institutions are personally asked to consider a religious vocation. The findings in this chapter shed light on the complex interplay of factors that influence women’s decisions and opportunities to enter religious orders at the local level. The shape of religious life in the Democratic Republic of Congo is dramatically different than it is in the United States. However, there is little evidence that the distinctive orientation of sisterhood in Congo reflects the “pre–Vatican II traditionalism” that Rodney Stark and Roger Finke identify as important to attracting religious vocations. As described in chapter 3, greater autonomy and the emphasis on the African inculturation of Catholicism following Vatican II help explain how the Congolese branch of the Sisters of Notre Dame has developed its own identity over time. Helen Rose Ebaugh is instructive in her attention to how opportunity structures available to young women in a society influence the growth or decline of religious orders, but this must be understood in its national context. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, gender inequality continues to limit many young women’s access to educational and leadership opportunities, especially in rural areas. These challenges are compounded by broader economic and political problems, which I address in chapter 7. As Congolese sisters share stories of brothers, sisters, and other family members who cannot find steady employment despite high educational attainment, they show that they are painfully aware they have structural opportunities for work and education that are unavailable to those outside the congregation. Amid mixed social messages regarding the value of religious vocations, sisters remain visible throughout the country in schools, universities, health dispensaries, hospitals, parishes, and local communities, often running their own institutions. The Catholic education system has retained its strength and visibility across the country despite occasional conflicts with the state. The congregational sponsorship of Notre Dame

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schools and health centers continues to grow throughout the region even in light of severe economic obstacles and the declining infrastructure of the country. Sisters recognize a clear need within the country that the congregation can fill, and women’s religious orders continue to carve out institutional spaces as they work to fill important gaps left by the state through the provision of education and health services. In addition to opportunities for lifelong work within the congregation, the structure of everyday life within the convent is well defined and offers some insulation from the unpredictable political and economic upheaval that frequently plagues the surrounding population. This stability may contribute to the vitality of Congolese expressions of religious life.

FIVE

A Life of Ministries

As a child growing up in the village of Pelende, Sr. Odette always knew she wanted to become a nurse. “[It was] the ministry which attracted me the most,” she explained. “Since my childhood I really wanted to be a nurse.” Even stronger than her desire to become a nurse, however, was her desire to become a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur. Educated by the order since primary school, she observed the love and respect sisters had for their students. “That is how, little by little, my vocation was born,” Sr. Odette, now forty-six, remembers. When Odette reached high school, she expressed her interest in becoming a sister and a nurse to the principal of her school, an American missionary. Learning of Odette’s interest in religious life, the principal discouraged her from pursuing nursing. Still primarily a teaching order in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sisters of Notre Dame did not have any congregationally sponsored nursing programs, and the principal feared Odette would “lose her religious vocation” while studying outside the community. “I wanted to go to a private school to study nursing, but Sr.  Eloise didn’t want [it] because she saw in me a girl who had hope and [a girl] who had a vocation,” reflected Sr. Odette. Faced with the choice between becoming a Sister of Notre Dame or a nurse, Sr. Odette chose the sisters. Still, she had lingering questions regarding why Sr. Eloise discouraged her from studying nursing. “When the sister decided this for me, it was hard,” Odette recalled with some ambivalence, “but I found this [to be] the will of God, which I accepted. I found this like a mystery. Why should the sister decide for me in that sense?” Despite being pulled between two different religious and professional vocations, Sr.  Odette did not consider joining other orders in the region such as the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary, which were founded to provide medical care to women. She continued to believe the Lord was

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calling her to the Sisters of Notre Dame. After entering the congregation in 1988, she taught for over a decade in cities and villages across what are now the Kongo-Central and Kwongo territorial provinces. In 2002, Sr.  Odette was still working as a teacher when the Congo-Kinshasa Province leadership team invited members to consider what types of studies they would like to pursue in the future. More than a decade had passed since Odette first thought of becoming a nurse, but she still felt a strong passion to care for people who were ill. Odette wrote to leadership and, with the support of the congregation, went on to earn first a diploma and then a university degree in nursing at the University of Kinshasa. Now Sr. Odette runs a health center in Kitenda, east of Kimwenza in the Bandundu region of the country, where she describes her mission as answering “the needs of the poor and the sick.”

Sr. Bridget had been working at a family shelter in Boston for twenty-two years when she began to think about finding a new ministry. As an outreach coordinator, Bridget was having more and more difficulty keeping up with changing technology and social media like Twitter and Facebook. Already in her late sixties, she decided it was time to leave. “It’s time to bow out of here,” she thought to herself. “I’m not, for the first time in my life, adding value. For the sake of the mission, I don’t belong holding on to this job.” Having taken on diverse ministries throughout her fifty years as a sister—from liturgical dancing to earning a doctorate—Sr. Bridget wondered what in the world she could do next. With each previous shift in ministries, Sr. Bridget had been through a significant discernment process, but at sixty-nine, this felt like the last and most critical one of her life. Joking to me about how members of her family live until they are one hundred, Sr.  Bridget explained that she wanted to do something meaningful with the years she had left. She also realized her job prospects in the current economy were bleak. “Did you ever hear of anybody being hired at sixty-nine?” Sr. Bridget laughed. Keeping these limitations in mind, Sr.  Bridget sat down with the provincial leadership team and told them, “All my life, I have realized that my particular talents are not suited for the marketplace, and yet I have managed to contribute to the order through these past twenty-two years. Now I’m not going to worry about that anymore. I’m going to find a place where I can use all my talents, even if there is no income attached to that.” The leadership team was sympathetic to Bridget’s predicament and did not express concerns regarding the income she would earn or the financial sup-

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port she would need while taking time to consider her future. After drafting a budget, Bridget received permission to take a six-month sabbatical for discerning her next steps in ministry. During this time, Bridget drew on a wide variety of spiritual resources for guidance and considered a number of different options. She spent time at an ecospirituality center, took a Reiki class to try “hands-on stuff,” underwent intense spiritual direction, and participated in retreats focused on sacred art and discernment. Bridget, who took up sketching when it became too physically difficult to continue liturgical dancing, continued drawing as she thought through her future. Over time, she kept returning to one pencil sketch of a person lost in a field of tall grass. The person does not know how to get out of the grass, Bridget explained as she showed me her picture, “but she has a big heart and wants to go and do something.”

Autonomy, Authority, and the Economics of Discernment Eventually, Sr. Bridget did find her way out of the tall grass and into her next ministry. Although she recounted her own process of discernment in more detail than most of the women I talked with in Greater Boston, Sr. Bridget’s experience was not uncommon. For American sisters, the discernment of ministries has become a private process in which sisters expect to have autonomy as they make decisions about their work, where they will live, and what they will do next. If a sister is asked by leadership to take a position she does not want, she may say no. When sisters like Bridget in Boston or Ipswich feel that it is time to leave one ministry and begin another, they rely on the support and resources of the congregation to make the transition. Many have opportunities to participate in spiritual direction and counseling, enroll in discernment and renewal programs, take a sabbatical, or earn advanced degrees as they prepare for new positions. Pulling from a range of spiritual and educational resources as well as broad social networks, members engage in a remarkable diversity of ministries throughout their lives. The range of settings where American and Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur work reflect their efforts to, in the words of their Constitutions of 1989, “hear the call of God . . . through the signs of the times” and respond to the greatest needs of the surrounding population.1 Pushing the boundaries of the congregation’s traditional focus on educating girls in primary and secondary schools, members of the Boston, Ipswich, and CongoKinshasa provinces have spearheaded new ministries in social work, immigration, health care, agriculture, and other areas over time. There still remain important differences in how individual sisters arrive at their par-

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ticular ministries within the congregation, which relate to contrasting ideas of autonomy, authority, leadership, and obedience within religious life, as well as substantial economic differences between provinces. In the United States, sisters have been “pushed into the marketplace.”2 When a sister leaves one ministry, she is responsible for finding another and can no longer rely on leadership to place her. With the decline of the parochial school system, there are fewer positions available for sisters within congregationally sponsored institutions, and balancing the desire to pursue fulfilling work and earn some income for the congregation can, as in Bridget’s case, pose a challenge. In the Congo-Kinshasa Province, decisions regarding ministry remain a corporate process through which the needs of the group are weighed alongside the capacities of the individual. When I asked Congolese sisters how they arrived at their current ministries, they did not speak about personal discernment but were more likely to share stories of being asked directly to take a position, regardless of whether they felt prepared or inclined to do it. Even women who had initial reservations or misgivings about the work they were asked to do accepted their assignments “by obedience.” Members also recognize that their individual contributions are essential to the health and stability of the province. Some brought up the need to engage in work that will help the province bring in its own income and become self-financing with the goal of achieving greater economic independence from wealthier provinces in the West. The majority of women in the Congo-Kinshasa Province are teachers, and few anticipate choosing other work. Many sisters explained their love for teaching and how this work was part of why they felt attracted to the Sisters of Notre Dame. Others, like Sr. Odette, were always drawn to a different ministry, like nursing, but did not have the opportunity to pursue training in this field until years after entering the order. Sisters now have greater opportunities to express preferences for the types of education and ministries they would like to pursue than in the past, but they recognize that leaders ultimately determine the priorities of the community. With limited resources and a more hierarchical structure, the province cannot offer each sister the time, resources, or continuing education that choosing ministries may require.

A Shift in Mission and Ministry among Catholic Sisters Before the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), most Catholic apostolic religious orders were dedicated to specific types of ministries such as teach-

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ing, nursing, or working with socially vulnerable groups of people like immigrants, orphans, the elderly, domestic workers, prisoners, and people with physical and mental disabilities. Sisters did not individually choose work or responsibilities within their community.3 Being a member of a religious institute was usually understood as a personal “vocation,” or divine call to serve God through religious life, while the “mission” of the order encompassed a common set of congregationally sponsored ministries.4 During Vatican II, American religious orders were deeply influenced by the church’s mandate to transform societal structures of injustice and work with people living in poverty as articulated in Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World), Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), and Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World).5 The Vatican II renewal process extended the concept of mission beyond a simple category of ministry to encompass the goals of that work and the ways that sisters do it. According to this theological perspective, “Teaching, nursing, social service, and other responses to human need do not in themselves constitute ministries. Ministry is, rather, the teaching toward the transformation of the world into a just and caring society.”6 In the United States, Catholic sisters were already well positioned to embrace the changes rippling out through the larger institutional church. During the 1950s, there was growing recognition within the Catholic Church that sisters needed better education and preparation to teach in American Catholic schools. With the support of clergy, bishops, and the Vatican, the Sister Formation Conference was established in 1952 to provide religious women with opportunities to pursue higher education regardless of their ministry. As American women gained greater access to higher education, Pope Pius XII argued that sisters should have access to formation and professional knowledge that would place them “on equal footing” with secular colleagues.7 By increasing sisters’ access to education, the Sister Formation Movement hoped to remove some of the obstacles that limited sisters when doing apostolic work and to enable them to develop more effective ministries.8 The movement gained momentum by strategically enlisting major superiors, college presidents and faculty, and formation directors to promote continuing education. The first goal of the Sister Formation Movement was to ensure sisters could complete baccalaureate degrees before they began teaching in Catholic schools. Sisters who had once been expected to take college courses during their summer breaks from teaching could now pursue higher education full time.9 As the movement grew, Catholic leaders worked to

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make graduate education a reality for the majority of sisters, who began pursuing master and doctorate degrees in a variety of fields. During this period, American Catholic sisters became the most highly educated group of women religious in the church and some of the most highly educated women in the United States.10 Surrounded by Boston’s many colleges and universities, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Massachusetts were able to fully embrace the educational opportunities afforded by the Sister Formation Movement and were among the first sisters to earn doctorates in the 1950s and 1960s. Although not representative of the Boston and Ipswich provinces, nearly a third of the Sisters of Notre Dame I spoke with in Greater Boston had earned doctorates, and most held master’s degrees. When surveyed in 1966, 70 percent of apostolic sisters in the United States worked in teaching, nursing, and/or the administration of these jobs.11 Since then, there has been a rise in sisters entering nontraditional careers such as pastoral ministry or community organizing and a decline in those working as classroom teachers or nurses. Like other American women in the labor force, Catholic sisters today enjoy a wide range of occupational and educational choices and opportunities across regions. They are more likely to seek out work that reflects their own individual talents and interests than in the past, even if it does not mirror the occupational identity of their order (as teachers or nurses, for example). Taking on diverse professional identities throughout their lives, most are not constrained by the requirement of physical proximity to the motherhouse or convent when choosing ministries.12 Unlike other women, however, sisters’ work decisions are usually made in consultation with their community leaders. Since sisters have taken a vow of poverty, they do not earn personal income. The salary they receive belongs to their congregation, and no matter what position they hold, the order will provide for their basic needs. In examining the professionalization of American sisters, scholars place varying degrees of importance on (1) the types of work that sisters undertake as members of their congregation, (2) the different ways in which they arrive at and understand that work, and (3) how their occupational opportunities, identities, and experiences compare with those of other women in the society more broadly.13 Most sociological studies of religious life document the diversification of work among sisters and focus on the disappearance of the occupational niche Catholic sisters once filled in the United States as a low-paid labor force of teachers and nurses in Catholic institutions.14 Much less is known about how sisters across the Global South develop and orient their ministries within countries with fewer economic resources but vibrant Catholic institutions.

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In this chapter, I show how global economic inequalities and the localization of religious life have shaped the ministries of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the Boston, Ipswich, and Congo-Kinshasa provinces. I outline the various settings where sisters work and explore how American and Congolese women bring different understandings of their place within the congregation to these ministries. I find that while sisters in both places explicitly locate their work in the order’s founding mission of education and ministering to people living in poverty, the provinces have adapted ministries to meet the particular needs of the two regions.

The Evolution of Ministries in Greater Boston and Congo-Kinshasa In the Boston and Ipswich provinces, sisters responded to Vatican II and declines in Catholic education by recognizing Greater Boston’s changing demographics and investing their energies in ministries for immigrants, low-income students of color, adult learners, single mothers, working-class families, and women who have been trafficked. Moving out of Catholic elementary and high schools to other nontraditional educational settings, Sisters of Notre Dame have been successful in establishing a number of their own innovative institutions. In 1974, two Sisters of Notre Dame founded Julie’s Family Learning Program, a community-based family and education program that serves low-income mothers and children in South Boston. The organization thrived over the next few decades, receiving both statewide and national recognition as a model program for providing effective adult education and family literacy. Following the archdiocese’s closing of Cardinal Cushing Central High School in 1992, the congregation opened the Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC) with the goal of providing adult learners with the tools they need to succeed in school, compete in the job market, and achieve financial independence. NDEC prepares new Americans for employment and cultural adaptation through a variety of programs for adult basic education (ABE), adult secondary education (ASE), English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), and learning English at a distance (LEAD), as well as through high school diploma programs. It has also become the hub for ESOL agencies across the state of Massachusetts. In 2004, the Boston and Ipswich provinces opened the Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence, which combines college preparatory curriculum with corporate work-study and serves primarily low-income students of color. At the same time that the

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Boston and Ipswich provinces have invested in these newer ministries, Sisters of Notre Dame have maintained their presence at congregationally sponsored academies in Hingham, Tyngsboro, and Worcester, where they provide private Catholic education for primarily middle- and upper-class girls. Sisters and laypeople work side by side in staffing these institutions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sisters of Notre Dame focused exclusively on the education and religious instruction of children and the preparation of young women for marriage until independence in 1960 with one important exception. The lived realities of the missionary encounter between Belgian sisters and the local population made providing health care a priority from their initial arrival on the continent in 1894.15 Like many groups of missionaries, Belgian sisters struggled to maintain their own health while caring for others in an unfamiliar environment. Only two years after they reached the Congo Free State, sleeping sickness took a devastating toll on villages in the Lower Congo (1896–1914), making the need for health programs even more apparent and giving greater urgency to sisters’ attempts to offer medical treatments.16 “In the beginning our [order’s] mission was education,” an older sister explained to me. “When we started with education, we saw that the population was happy but sometimes sick, so we opened health centers. Apart from that, we educate and take care of [and cure] our own children and the surrounding population who are sick.” In the first missions, sisters cared for orphans, provided catechesis for women and children, and taught home economics in Kikongo, the local language.17 Gradually, after developing primary, preprimary, and postprimary education, the order founded its own école normale,18 where sisters trained high school graduates to be teachers. Unlike in Belgium and the United States, Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame do not have a history of establishing or teaching in elite academies. Because most of the congregation’s schools and dispensaries are located in villages and rural areas outside Kinshasa, sisters have always worked with low- or middle-income populations across the region. Since the colonial period, they have remained engaged in caring for the sick, organizing nutritional education throughout missions and villages, and building dispensaries where patients could be hospitalized.19 Before the establishment of the Congo-Kinshasa Province in 1959, missionary sisters opened five dispensaries and maternity hospitals in Lemfu, Ngidinga, Mpese, Pelende, and Kitenda, which still exist today. Since taking leadership of their own province in 1975, Congolese sisters have opened new nursery, primary, and secondary schools. They have also

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continued to develop the curriculum at many of their existing secondary schools, placing a stronger emphasis on teaching, science, literature, and commerce in recent years. Like in Boston and Ipswich, the Congo-Kinshasa Province expanded beyond its traditional ministries in education during this period, opening three centers focused on the development of women (including one across the border in the Republic of Congo), converting the Ngidinga dispensary into a hospital, constructing a health center and maternity hospital in Kimwenza, and taking over the administration of a health center in Kiséénso and a center for people with physical disabilities in Kisantu. In 1985, following repeated requests from local residents, the province converted its Ngidinga dispensary into a full hospital and expanded its focus to include the prevention of tuberculosis, malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and intestinal parasites. The establishment of these new ministries alongside the Congo-Kinshasa Province’s ongoing commitment to congregationally sponsored schools is part of sisters’ efforts to “respond to the lived realities of the people being served.”20 Not all the new ministries established by Congolese sisters, however, have developed to meet external needs. In response to the changing relationship between provinces in different parts of the world over the past three decades, the Congo-Kinshasa Province has invested in incomegenerating agricultural projects. Since the colonial period, sisters in the region have relied on the financial support of those in the Global North to provide basic necessities for the community such as food, clothing, and housing. This dynamic is shifting as sisters in Congo seek greater control over decision-making in their own province and witness the decline of religious vocations in the West.  It is now evident that in most developing countries, sisters are aging rapidly with few new members to take their place, leading to rising health care costs and dwindling incomes from sisters in the workforce. Recognizing that sisters in the Global North will not be able to provide the same levels of financial support to the Global South in the future, the Congo-Kinshasa Province is working to achieve greater financial independence and autonomy from other provinces.

From Obedience to Discernment in Greater Boston Taking lifelong vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, Catholic sisters are accountable to both the structures of their individual orders and the hierarchy of the church. Until Vatican II, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Greater Boston entered the congregation knowing they would be trained as teachers and missioned to Catholic schools and academies. Although a few

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had international missionary aspirations, they did not expect to choose the areas they would study, the subjects and grade levels they would teach, or where they would be assigned on their first missions. During this period, the vow of obedience meant obedience to your order—trusting that your assignment was the will of God as expressed through your superiors and that you would be sent where Notre Dame needed you. “When I first started, in my initial days,” remembered Sr. Betty, a sixty-nine-year-old educator who entered in 1961, “we were told, ‘You are going here. You are going there,’ and you just went, and you didn’t question whether you liked it or not. You packed up your bags, and in three days, you were at a new school or a new house.” Sr. Maura, who entered in 1947, explained, Obedience, really, really in the original definition was more a list coming out. . . . “You’re going to teach a fifth grade at St. Gregory’s in Dorchester.” OK, and I go, “St. Gregory’s in Dorchester? I live in Dorchester. I’m up the street from St. Mark’s. Do they know what they’re doing? That they’re sending me to my own [home]town instead of sending me way over to Andover or Newton or someplace like that?” So I said, “Will of God, go to St. Gregory’s.” So it was directed by them [the superiors]. . . . It was just the direction of where you were needed and directed by someone [to go].

As young sisters, Betty and Maura knew the power to be missioned resided with someone else, and they accepted the assignments they were given even when they could not understand the reasoning behind them. In addition to what at times seemed like arbitrary assignments, a sister could be moved from one ministry to another if her superiors did not think she was fit for the position. With some amusement, Sr.  Bridget recalled how she was removed from teaching primary school because of her handwriting. “That was a short career,” she told me matter-of-factly, “because a supervisor came along—we used to have lots of supervisors in those days—and she saw my handwriting on the blackboard, and she thought it was horrible modeling for children.” The supervisor instructed Sr. Bridget to have a fifth-grade girl in her class do all the writing on the blackboard for the rest of the term, and Bridget figured she was getting a new mission at the end of the year. As anticipated, the next year, she was bumped up to high school “where your handwriting didn’t matter.” After Vatican II, American sisters had opportunities to leave the classroom and experiment with other ways of doing ministry. As congregations were rediscovering and reinterpreting their founding stories in response to Ecclesiae Sanctae (1966) and other council documents, the term charism

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emerged as a new way to talk about the spiritual mission of religious orders.21 Pope Paul VI was the first to specifically apply the term to religious life as he attempted to clarify the teachings of Vatican II and reflect on the meaning of vocation in the 1971 Evangelica Testificatio (Evangelical Witness: On the Renewal of the Religious Life according to the Teaching of the Second Vatican Council). He wrote that true renewal in religious orders should be founded on the Holy Spirit, which is manifested according to the unique charisms of the founders of the communities: Only in this way will you be able to reawaken hearts to truth and to divine love in accordance with the charisms of your founders who were raised up by God within His Church. Thus the Council rightly insists on the obligation of religious to be faithful to the spirit of their founders, to their evangelical intentions and to the example of their sanctity. In this it finds one of the principles for the present renewal and one of the most secure criteria for judging what each institute should undertake. In reality, the charism of the religious life, far from being an impulse born of flesh and blood or one derived from a mentality which conforms itself to the modern world, is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who is always at work within the Church.22

American Sisters of Notre Dame were emboldened by these statements to explore the contemporary resonance of St. Julie’s life and rearticulate her mission to stand “with the poor, especially women and children, in the most abandoned places.”23 They also began to develop new understandings of authority and obedience as they carried out this mission. Women who entered before Vatican II remember these shifts vividly, recalling the excitement of the first time they were able to practice “choice of ministry.” At this point, if a sister felt it was time to leave a position, she could speak to someone in authority and look for an opportunity elsewhere. In 1971, sisters began to move out of larger convents into smaller communities where they experimented with “collegiality,” or living without a superior. Evolving conceptions of poverty, authority, and ministry led to a number of important early endeavors. The province undertook an assessment of their schools in the greater Boston area and agreed they were staffing sisters at schools where they were not needed as much as in the inner city. As a consequence, many sisters chose to go to South Boston and teach at Cardinal Cushing Central High School. Some moved into the low-income housing projects in the surrounding area, participating in local councils and housing initiatives and starting a summer school program for the youth who lived there. Sisters of Notre Dame were also among the

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first women to begin doing pastoral ministry in parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Boston. Many members in Boston were at the forefront of implementing Vatican  II changes in the wider congregation. Although the new models of ministry and community they innovated would eventually be accepted throughout Notre Dame provinces in the United States, these efforts were controversial and even divisive in these early years. Sr. Maura was one of the first three sisters to move out of the convent and into the D Street Housing Project in 1966. “I was a rebel,” she told me with a small smile. “A nice rebel, but a rebel.” Maura describes her decision to leave a highly structured community of fifty-two sisters in the old convent on West Broadway to live in a small apartment among working-class people of the neighborhood as a “movement I considered precious.” This decision was not without costs, and she remembers the difficulty of facing its consequences: When I moved with the other two sisters out of the convent, it was a really drastic move because some people were very much against it, and they told me so. They felt I was looking for something else and that I wasn’t being true to the community. Even the reverend mother [Loretto Julia]—the very head [of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur]—wrote a letter to me. And I loved her. She was the first American that had been elected [international leader of the congregation], and she wrote to me, and she told me she was ashamed of me. But even with all that, I was strong enough in my belief of what community meant, and what living among the poor meant, and what giving as much of my service to support the children and mostly single mothers that lived there at D Street [meant]. I felt strong enough about that to be sure of it, and to live it day by day, and to be happy with it even if I displeased some other people. I look now and that’s the whole pattern of our order at this point, but back in 1965 and ’66, it was unheard of—we were the beginners.

Even when personally confronted with the disapproval of congregational leaders, American sisters continued to experiment with how to live out their missions. By the early 1970s, many sisters were following the path that Sr. Maura helped forge, choosing their own ministries and communities in consultation with local leaders. They began to look at their lives and imagine new horizons for the future. Sr. Maura explained that “the whole process of discernment, the process of a method by which one thought out one’s mission” had changed. Before this, however, major structural changes in the Massachusetts Province took place, enabling a greater number of sisters to pursue these new avenues of ministry.

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Following Vatican II, ministries became a point of tension and division within the Massachusetts Province. In the early 1970s, the province was large, with approximately 1,300 members. Sisters recall that there also seemed to be 1,300 different ideas regarding how to interpret Vatican II’s call for engagement with the world. “Sisters had very different ideas of what fidelity to God was,” Sr.  Bridget explained. “Some people were choosing the habit and traditional works, and other people were choosing the inner city and unstructured apostolates out of [the] habit. There were really two theologies clashing at the time, and things were not always pleasant within a community. There was a great struggle here locally between groups.” Dissatisfied with the pace of change, Sr. Dorothy helped organize a “Monday Night Group” of sisters that began meeting to discuss their vision for the future. She explained, “Everyone had their own ideas about everything. . . . We had the mix of people who were yearning for the old days, people who felt we weren’t moving fast enough, people in the middle who didn’t know where they were. And it got to the point within the Massachusetts Province that we had several attempts to develop a government plan we could accept that would be more congenial with religious life as we were trying to live it in those days.” Feeling paralyzed within the current structure of the Massachusetts Province, the Monday Night Group submitted a petition to congregational leadership in Rome requesting to become a separate province. Much of the language in the petition focused specifically on mission and how to recognize and respond to needs in the wider community outside the convent. In 1971, leadership in Rome accepted the petition and divided the province into three subprovinces, which were labeled A, B, and C. Unofficially and to the horror of many sisters, these subgroups were given nicknames by people outside the community, referencing their alleged relationship to Vatican II. There were the “No-No Girls,” who believed changes in religious life were happening too rapidly, the “Go-Go Girls” for whom change could not come fast enough, and the “So-So Girls” who stood somewhere in between the two extremes. This structure proved awkward and in 1973, the subgroups of the Massachusetts Province were organized into two separate provinces. Sisters had the choice of joining either the Ipswich Province, which adopted a more cautious approach to changes in religious life, or the Boston Province, whose members were already initiating new ministries and moving into smaller communities. Sr. Dorothy was asked to be the first provincial of the 350 sisters who now made up the Boston Province and was then faced with the challenge of leading the young group as sisters branched out into diverse ministries.

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Although Sr. Dorothy had spearheaded efforts to make all these changes possible, it was difficult to shoulder responsibility for the risks of each new endeavor in the Boston Province. Dorothy remembers talking with sisters who were teaching but did not feel called to teach. As several sisters acknowledged, “some people were never meant to be teachers.” Still, explained Sr.  Dorothy, “It was a challenge for me to stay open to that.” She continued, “I always remember—in fact we were laughing about it recently—Sr. Maureen was teaching biology in high school, and I remember talking to her and she said, ‘I just don’t feel this is where I belong.’ She wanted to do pastoral work. So to be able to say yes and to trust that it was going to be good, it was very heartening to me.” Another member reminded Dorothy of a crucial decision she made during those years as provincial, which enabled the growth of a new ministry. The sister was working in a very depressed area of Dorchester and asked Dorothy if she could open a Montessori school. Dorothy agreed, and although she does not remember making this decision, she told me, “It’s one of the thrills of my life to know that I had the courage and the wisdom to say yes.” It took time to separate the finances of the two provinces. As Boston sisters branched out into new ministries, leaders had to develop alternative models of supporting the community. The Massachusetts Province owned considerable properties, which were divided between the two groups. Members of the Boston Province decided they did not want to own property and sold most of their properties, while the Ipswich Province maintained the academies and the Ipswich estate. When Sr. Elaine became leader of the Boston Province, she had little administration experience. Now eighty-four, Sr. Elaine described herself as very young and naïve: “So I’m very green. I live in the project; I have no desire to move out of the project. Somebody called me up, a sister said she was going to be going back to Alabama and what should she do about health insurance? And I said to myself, ‘Health insurance? I don’t know anything about health insurance. Do we have health insurance?’ So you know, we lived and learned.” At the time, the Archdiocese of Boston paid sisters working in parish schools three hundred dollars as a yearly stipend without health insurance. The Boston Province had little money in the beginning, so when a sister had a hospital bill she did not know how to pay, Sr. Elaine sent out a letter asking members who were free over the summer to get jobs to help cover the expense. Sisters responded by taking on a variety of odd jobs. One sister worked in a doughnut shop, and another filled in at a cleaning service while the manager was on vacation. Somebody else drove a cab, and a sister who was a baseball fan found a job at Fenway Park. Others typed stu-

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dent theses, and by the end of the summer, they paid the bill. Looking back on these uncertain beginnings, Sr.  Elaine credits another skilled member of the leadership team for making investments that secured the financial future of the province.

Since the late 1970s, sisters in both the Boston and Ipswich provinces have had the ability to carefully discern their next ministries in conversation with other sisters, the members of the provincial leadership team, spiritual directors, and others. While discerning, some sisters have the opportunity to take a sabbatical or enroll in programs focused specifically on exploring different calls to ministry. The opportunity to spend time deliberating about the meaning and purpose of one’s work with the support of the congregation at different stages over the life course is a privilege that most American sisters did not have in the past, and one that few Congolese sisters have today. Sr. Lisa, age forty-seven, directly addressed this privilege when she talked about being free from family obligations and financial concerns to pursue personally meaningful work: I think that being a religious, in some ways, is a very privileged position because I am free to go on mission. I am free to do what my sister-in-law, who’s married, would love to do and can’t because she has a family and a job. I have a job too, but I’m supported by my community and my community’s job is ministering to the poor . . . is education. Because of that and because I belong to this group of women who have a support system and who have financial support and all of that, I’m more free to go. I don’t have a family to whom I need to be responsible. And so we live a life of great privilege, I think. And I’m careful how I use that because we don’t live lavishly, but we live a life of great privilege because I’m able to do exactly what I’m called to do. . . . So I think we have to realize that, and I think I have to always remember, What am I going to do with this privilege?

Sr. Bridget framed this privilege differently, as she compared the congregation to a wealthy spouse. Reflecting on opportunities to travel and study internationally, Sr.  Bridget observed, “These are kinds of things that religious orders can promote and sustain that if I was an individual outside, I wouldn’t be able to do, unless I married rich. And I figured out a long time ago, a rich husband and the congregation are the same thing in terms of opportunities.” Sr.  Lisa and Sr.  Bridget are not alone in believing that religious vows

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offer the freedom and opportunities to dedicate oneself more fully to ministries, spirituality, and personal development. While several Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur made the same argument, Lisa and Bridget’s insights capture the unique position of contemporary sisters in the United States who have both the financial and community support to choose the types of work and education they would like to pursue without family obligations. Personal discernment has become institutionalized among American Sisters of Notre Dame, and most members now take choice of ministries for granted. At one point, Sr. Lisa was asked by the province to consider teaching in an academy. “There are things I have said no [to],” she explained. “I thought about it, and I went back to her [the leader], and I said no. And she said ‘Why?’ . . . I said, ‘I’m working in the ministry that has grabbed me, and I’m working in the ministry where there is a need, and I think now to go and serve in a school where I’d be working with more wealthy people would damage my spirit.’ Not that I don’t think it’s a worthy thing to do, but I said, ‘I can’t now.’” While Sr. Lisa believed she had the right to say no, she is well aware that this choice did not exist for members of her order in the past. “Discernment is so much more a part of our life now—our prayer life and our communal life,” she emphasized. “Our ministerial life is much more interactive and much more a product of discernment than it ever used to be. In the past, the leadership discerned, but the sister was told.” Although discerning ministries offers sisters a greater sense of personal autonomy, challenges remain. Sisters are largely responsible for finding their own work. With fewer Notre Dame institutions than in the past, the difficulty of finding a position later in life has become increasingly evident to older sisters as they transition between ministries. These issues pose particular challenges for American leadership. Reflecting on the five years she spent on a province leadership team, Sr. Jo talked about what it means to work with an aging community. “I spent a lot of time at wakes and funerals,” Sr. Jo told me. “We have lost a lot of sisters in the last few years. Also, you know, helping sisters either move out of ministry because they have done the best they can and it’s time for them to retire themselves. Or to be able to say, ‘You can’t drive anymore.’ Those are hard decisions, you know?” US province leadership teams, which are now made up of three elected sisters headed by a general moderator, attempt to balance the individual and collective needs of members. These teams rely on consensus-based models of decision-making and are expected to be in constant communication with members. Sr. Jo recounted the struggles of achieving consensus in a group of three and reflected on how the vow of obedience to superiors

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has shifted to a vow of obedience to God, transforming the relationship between individual sisters and leadership. She described a process through which sisters discern what God is calling them to do and enter into dialogue with leaders about where this call is leading them: The toughest obedience is really obedience to God. It’s my job to try to figure that out—what it is that God really is asking me to do. And then it’s my job to try and convey it to whoever is in leadership. For instance, I am in the process of trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. The way I view obedience is that it’s important that I have a conversation with whoever my leadership contact person [is]. . . . Does she have any thoughts? Does she have any ideas about things I might want to look at? So that’s an initial part of the conversation. As I explore this, it’s going to be really important that I’m able to . . . articulate back to her what I think it is that God’s asking me to do next. And so I’ve been doing that process, but ultimately it’s also respecting her and keeping her as part of that process. Now, I also know from being in leadership, that’s not exactly how everybody does it. There have been people who never consulted leadership, but they basically just inform you that “I’m taking this new ministry” or “I’m doing this, that, or the other thing.” I don’t see it that way. . . . It’s not that I expect that she’s going to tell me what to do, because I don’t think that she is. . . . It’s not like the old days when superiors did that. It’s important for me to be in a prayerful relationship, [as is] trying to be mindful and hear or think and see and notice things so that I’m making a good decision for myself. And then it’s important that I convey it to her and then get her affirmation to go ahead and do that. . . . That’s probably the vow that’s most dramatically changed from what I thought before I ever entered and then in my beginning, early days.

Sr. Jo knows from experiences that some sisters communicate their desires to leadership and ask for feedback and affirmation as they plan for the future. Other sisters simply inform leadership of their decisions as they move forward into new ministries, or they exercise their right to say no to the province like Sr. Lisa did. Looking forward, it is unclear what this variation in how sisters make decisions about ministries will mean for the collective future of US provinces. Sisters are not responsible for earning a specific amount of income for the congregation, but whatever they do earn belongs to their province. If a sister works for a congregationally sponsored school, academy, or center, her stipend goes directly to the province. If she is employed in a secular position, her salary is taxed before being given to the province. Both types

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of income are the property of the institution, and therefore each sister contributes different amounts to the larger community. A sister who works in a well-paid position as a nurse, for example, may earn enough to support three sisters, while another working in direct service may make just enough to provide for her own financial needs. All property and earnings are held in common, and each summer, sisters draft individual budgets for the funds they will need that year, including personal expenses like retreats, ministry costs, training, and professional licensing. Sisters who live in community draft a budget for shared living expenses like food, gas, heating, and house supplies with the other members who reside there. Although communities no longer have superiors, one member serves as a de facto treasurer, gathering the personal budgets, which remain confidential, and combining them into the operating budget for the year. This budget is submitted to the province finance committee, which works with the community until the budget is approved and finalized. Through this process, sisters are expected to live responsibly according to a modest personal and household budget, even though this budget may vary from sister to sister, community to community, and year to year. When making financial decisions, leaders must weigh the individual needs of sisters alongside the collective needs of the province. As older sisters retire from paid positions and younger sisters follow where the spirit leads them, being in positions of leadership demands great flexibility and responsiveness to the changing commitments and desires of members.

The Vow of Obedience and the Quest for Self-Determination in Congo-Kinshasa Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame also interpreted Vatican II as an important call to engage with the world and respond to the lived realities of those around them through the development of new ministries. Vatican  II has not, however, led to dramatic changes in Congolese sisters’ understandings of the vow of obedience. Across the Congo-Kinshasa Province, there remains a clear hierarchy of leadership, authority, and respect, which reflects both the regional history of the order and the communal orientation of the surrounding culture. While many American sisters were embracing a sense of personal freedom in new, more flexible provincial structures during the 1970s, Congolese sisters were developing greater collective autonomy as African sisters within a postcolonial Catholic Church. Stepping away from some of the colonial practices that reflected the Belgian roots of the congregation, they had the transnational support and encouragement to develop

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more locally responsive forms of religious life. In 1975, the first Congolese leader of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Zaire was elected and the vice province became independent. For the first time, Congolese women had the chance to raise a collective voice within an international order that had always been led by sisters in the Global North. Today, Congolese sisters have greater opportunities to express individual preferences for work or education, but they still enter religious life expecting to go and serve when and wherever their leadership asks. Sr. Claire, an expressive twenty-six-year-old from Ngidinga, told me definitively, “The mission, the apostolate, it is the congregation that gives it. It doesn’t come from me. I did not go and say, ‘Give me such and such work.’ . . . There is the vow of chastity, the vow of poverty, and the vow of obedience. When they tell me, ‘Sr. Claire, you are going to [be] a principal,’ I say, ‘Thank you, my mother.’” Sr. Claire bowed to illustrate. “I say, ‘Thank you, my mother’ because those are the three vows I made.” Assigned to be a directrice (principal) shortly after finishing the novitiate, Sr.  Claire remembers feeling, “first of all, fear” to be shouldering such a great responsibility with such little experience, and she asked herself, “Why? Why? Why?” After the surprise wore off, she accepted the position as the Lord’s work and turned to older sisters for guidance. Most members of the Congo-Kinshasa Province see themselves as educators and teachers but realize they will contribute to the congregation in a number of capacities throughout their lives. In contrast to the United States, few sisters in Congo take time away from ministry to personally discern the type of work they feel called to do or explore how they might best use their talents. This is a privilege enjoyed primarily by sisters in the more affluent Global North. Instead, they go where leadership determines they are needed. Nevertheless, the province’s attempts to meet the needs of the surrounding population and to achieve greater financial independence from the West have opened up fresh avenues of ministry in health care, agriculture, and other areas that extend beyond teaching in Notre Dame schools. As the leadership of the province determines the work of members across the region, they are constrained by a different set of economic and political realities. For the first Congolese women entering in 1959 and shortly thereafter, the volatile conditions within the newly independent country often determined the course of sisters’ ministries. Sr. Inès entered the Sisters of Notre Dame in 1960 from the Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu and held a number of different positions in Notre Dame schools during her early years in the congregation. First, she assisted the principal

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of a primary school and taught religion. Eventually, she became a supervisor in the secondary schools and head of a boarding school. In addition to formal education, she took a special interest in working with the mothers of her students, teaching them practical skills like how to sew skirts and blouses for their children. “All this was done from one mission to another,” reflected Inès, “according to the needs of the place where they sent me.” Sr. Inès might have spent the rest of her life as an educator if it had not been for the changing relationship between the state and the church in the postindependence period. When Mobutu Sese Seko began to nationalize schools in the 1970s, Sisters of Notre Dame briefly gave up direction of their educational institutions. Because the government asked sisters to stop teaching religion in the schools, Sr.  Inès began studying midwifery, which she practiced for the next twenty-seven years. At age seventy-four, she no longer delivers babies but continues working at the Notre Dame health center and maternity hospital in Kimwenza. Like many older Congolese sisters I spoke with, Sr.  Inès sees the goals of her work in relation to the broader needs of the community and a strict conception of obedience to God as expressed through provincial leadership. “I do the work which is entrusted to me by the congregation, by my vow of obedience,” she reflected. “All that I do, I do to please God—who called me to do the will of God.” For some sisters, reconciling the desire to become a Sister of Notre Dame with an affinity for a particular ministry meant delaying work they felt a strong calling to do. Sr.  Clémence, a fifty-six-year-old nurse, is very open about the fact that when she entered Notre Dame in 1978, she did not share most sisters’ love of teaching. Clémence believed she had a vocation for nursing but, at the same time, felt a strong personal desire to join the congregation. She knew Sisters of Notre Dame well and wanted to serve people without being married. Sharp and direct, Sr. Clémence told me, “Personally, I was not attracted to the ministry.” She laughed. “The ministry did not attract me. What led me to become a sister was the desire I had within. It was no mystery that I wanted to become one of the Sisters of Notre Dame.” Like Sr. Odette’s story in the opening of this chapter, Clémence entered the congregation and taught for several years instead of pursuing her interest in nursing or joining a different order. Eventually, other sisters recognized her skill in caring for community members who were sick, and her superiors made the decision to send her to nursing school. She explained, “I had this vocation [for nursing] well before I became a sister, but there was no opportunity when I was a student. Later on in the convent, while observing me, the sisters saw in me the talent of taking care of the sick, so they advised

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me to go back to nursing school. It worked fine when they oriented me into nursing because I loved it myself.” Although leaders eventually recognized her natural aptitude for nursing, Sr. Clémence was willing to postpone this calling to align her work with the ministries of the congregation. In contrast to sisters Clémence and Odette, most told me they were drawn to the congregation’s educational mission and wanted to become teachers, but this did not mean it was always easy to go where they were  sent. Some sisters, especially those who grew up in Kinshasa accustomed to city life, described the difficulty of being missioned to small villages or remote rural areas where students walk hours to attend class. Others were asked to pursue higher education outside the country and struggled initially with being so far from home, wondering whether they would be able to adapt to a new language and culture. Working with novices, Sr.  Geneviève was asked by the provincial to study for one year at a formation center in Burkina Faso. A warm smiling woman, Sr. Geneviève explained how she received the decision: “It was not for me to choose. It was the provincial leader at that time. . . . It was too bad, but I understood because I had to form African [sisters]. I followed the formation there in Africa to better understand our African culture and how to form a young African woman.” Similarly, Sr.  Mamy was asked to study at a university in Kenya despite her initial doubts. Telling me she did not even know how to exchange simple greetings in English when she arrived, Sr. Mamy says she went “by obedience alone.” She explained, “It was hard for me to go to Kenya. Because I was saying, ‘I don’t know people there. How am I going to start and study?’ To start my studies in another language I’ve never known. . . . If it was on my own, I couldn’t, but I made a vow of obedience. I have to go.” Although younger sisters talk more about the ability to be in conversation with leadership about the direction of ministries, their collective experiences continue to reflect a clearly defined and well-understood structure of authority within the province. When Congolese women discussed the challenges of living out their religious vows, they often turned to the difficulties of obedience and accepting assignments regardless of one’s own hopes, desires, or fears. In the words of Sr. Maryse, “Obedience is very difficult. Today they can tell you leave here and go to another community, and [in] the community you are going, there is no communication, there is no internet, there is no network. . . . Those are the challenges we find in our religious life.” Most sisters recognize and accept their place within the organizational hierarchy. They are willing to accept the work they are asked to do, live in remote villages, and pursue education outside the country

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when asked—regardless of their personal feelings about how and where they could best serve the congregation. Unlike US leadership, which has moved to consensus-based models for decision-making, the Congo-Kinshasa Province still elects a provincial and each individual community of sisters has a superior. Within a context where provincial leaders take primary responsibility for identifying regional ministry needs and determining how sisters will respond to them, those in leadership positions shoulder a heavy responsibility for both the direction of the organization and the well-being of its members. When I spoke with the provincial in Kimwenza, she told me she had been asked to take on the position three times before accepting. “I never wanted to give this service,” she explained. “Three times I refused. After, I finally accepted. I said, ‘Okay, perhaps the Lord is calling me to something.’” The provincial went on to describe the challenges of her position. She is painfully aware that the decisions she makes affect each member of the province, and knows that sisters are not always happy with the ministries they are asked to accept. “It is not easy to manage people, to know and manage the needs of each sister,” she shared. “The biggest challenge is when it is necessary to make a decision about the life of a sister. That is what costs me a lot.” Although there is no question that the provincial is head of the order in Congo, recent shifts have broadened authority structures within the region. The provincial works as part of a leadership team called a provincial council, and she explained that she could rely on fellow leaders to help make important decisions. She can also seek counsel from Assemblée des Supérieurs Majeurs en République Démocratique du Congo (ASUMA), a group of women religious leaders who meet to talk through problems with one another and share insights and experiences.

Over the past three decades, the challenges described by sisters in Greater Boston—aging membership and few vocations—have also had an impact on Congolese sisters. The Congo-Kinshasa Province continues to rely heavily on provinces in the West for support.24 However, as vocations steadily decline in the US and disappear in Europe, there are fewer young sisters in the workforces there to generate income. The median age of members is rising, along with health care costs. Aware that the current levels of funding from sisters in the Global North are unsustainable in the future, Congolese leaders have initiated efforts to become more financially independent by growing, consuming, and selling their own produce and developing smaller income-generating projects. As Sr. Maryse explained while talking

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about her work as a tailor, “Right now, we cannot just sit around idly. It’s everywhere in the congregation: we have to find activities to be able to provide for [our needs] and to have something to cover expenses. . . . We create little activities that can give us something and serve in the congregation.” Congolese sisters’ efforts to achieve financial independence are now woven into the fabric of the community, evident when walking the grounds of the provincial house, sitting down for a meal in the réfectoire, or passing through the community’s courtyard. While trying to make myself useful and to integrate into community life during my first weeks in Kimwenza, I spent time helping Sr. Mamy with daily chores. As I weeded rows of plants in the postulant garden and savored different varieties of sweet community-grown mangos and bananas during meals, I was surrounded by sisters’ careful efforts to sustain and provide for their own members. Occasionally I sat with Sr. Mamy in the novitiate house, doing my best to hand-stitch the inner hems of sisters’ brightly patterned blouse sleeves in a straight line. One quiet evening, she taught me how to tightly tie plastic bags of homemade ice cream that would be sold locally. In the afternoons when most sisters were doing work outside the convent, I became friendly with the community tailor, who worked in a large room facing onto the courtyard, measuring, cutting, and sewing fabric in every hue of the rainbow. I admired the white vestments and embroidered stoles for priests hanging crisply in plastic against the turquoise walls at the back of her workshop as she told me the story of how she came to do this work. While teaching as well as serving as superior of her community, province leadership asked Sr.  Maryse to open a “sewing house” in Kimwenza and become the province tailor. With a university degree in dressmaking, coupe couture, her skills would be valuable to the community, sewing garments and selling them to raise funds for the region. As I talked with other sisters, I learned Sr. Mamy and Sr. Maryse’s efforts to support the province are not unique. For some Congolese sisters, the recent push for financial independence means overseeing small, but vital farming projects and pursuing relevant education or training. For others, providing for the province through agricultural development has become a full-time ministry. While teaching high school in Lemfu, Sr. Mamy took on the responsibilities of the sisters’ farm. Before going to school in the morning, she would make sure the pigs were fed and met with farmworkers to go over their tasks for the day. Now as she works with postulants, Mamy continues to sow, water, weed, and tend to the rows of vegetables that grow in the nearby garden. Sr. Colette was asked by the province to study agriculture. After finishing her degree at Institut

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Supérieur Agro Vétérinaire Kimwenza (ISAV), she developed a hen house project, building a separate structure near the provincial house where the community could raise chickens. For Sr. Simone, agriculture, or “development” as it is known in the province, is now a full-time ministry. Simone was working as treasurer of a local retreat center when she was approached by leadership to see if she would be willing to manage the province’s farmlands. “They consulted me, I accepted, [and] I went to help them,” she tells me without hesitation. Although Simone does not have formal training in agriculture, she draws on her experiences farming with her family prior to entering the order. “Before, when I was still young, when I was at home, we did the same work with my parents,” she explains. Simone is now in charge of planting crops of cassava, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, watermelon, chili peppers, and other vegetables and overseeing the orchards where sisters are growing mangos, avocados, and dates. Two full-time workers help her farm 16.5 hectares of the 60-hectare property and local people come to work the land in exchange for a portion of the produce. The harvest is brought to Kimwenza, where it helps feed the community or is sold to generate revenue for the province. As Sr.  Simone explains how income from the farms and orchards is used, she points to the economic dependency that historically characterized the relationship between Congolese sisters and their counterparts in the United States and Europe. The main objective of her ministry is, in Sr. Simone’s words, “to be self-sufficient” so that the province will not need to rely on sisters in other places for support: Everywhere they are saying to us to be self-sufficient because there is no money. You cannot wait only [for] the US to send us money, or Europe to send us money. Ourselves, we have to do something. That’s why we have this fund [from the farming]. This fund now is helping us—when we want to build a house, we will not wait for the money from the US. . . . For example, [if] we want to buy land, we’ll not wait [on] money from the US to buy land. With the money we have, we can buy [it]. Or a sister who is sick—to take the sister to the hospital, we’ll not wait for the money from the US. We have to use our money.

As evident in Sr. Simone’s comments, the goal of self-sufficiency is as much about raising local funds as it is about transnational relationships and the desire to determine how money will be spent within the province without appealing to sisters in the United States or Europe.

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The experiences of sisters Clémence, Odette, Geneviève, Mamy, Simone, and Maryse bring to light the Congo-Kinshasa Province efforts to diversify the studies and ministries of sisters over the past few decades. Often, the opportunity to branch out into a new field arises with the recognition of an unmet need within the province or at a particular mission site. In addition to professionally qualified teachers and nurses, the province now counts among its members theologians, linguists, and agriculture and veterinary engineers, as well as an electrician, lawyer, information technologist, administrator, psychologist, anthropologist, medical doctor, laboratory technician, and auto mechanic.25 Evident in many of these new occupations is a practical and communally driven sense of ministry shaped by the finances of the province. Religious life in Congo remains corporately focused, and in most cases, sisters do not personally choose or discern the work they would like to do. Instead, they see themselves as part of a communal body that must at times prioritize the needs of the province and the direction of leadership over the wishes of the individual.

Conclusions As Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur branch out into new ministries and reflect on the work they are doing, they articulate a common emphasis on responding to the local needs and realities of those around them. At the individual level, however, sisters arrive at their particular ministries very differently within the two regions. These contrasting models of ministry within the congregation reveal the stickiness of place when it comes to how sisters structure their provinces and determine the responsibilities of members.26 Sisters in Greater Boston are personally concerned with finding a ministry that will enable them to both contribute to the mission of the congregation and develop their own gifts and capacities. They are usually willing to go where the province needs them—or to take on leadership roles if asked—but their primary concern is fulfilling the social-justice mission of the church and heeding the congregation’s call to work with those at the margins of society. As I talked with sisters at different stages of their ministries, it was clear that discernment has become a private spiritual process. Although sisters must live simply on a modest budget, they are rarely constrained by financial concerns or leadership when choosing work, furthering their educations, or taking time out of the labor force. In the Congo-Kinshasa Province, a growing concern with becoming financially independent and self-sustaining has motivated leadership to prioritize a different set of communally and regionally focused concerns.

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Within the collective structure of the province, there is less room for sisters to express their personal preferences or reservations regarding the types of work they do, where they will do it, or the preparation that is needed. Standing in stark contrast to the professional autonomy and regional mobility enjoyed by many American sisters, there is little focus on personal fulfillment outside integration with the goals of the community among Congolese sisters. Working in physical proximity to a Notre Dame community in a position that serves the needs of the province remains critical. Individual sisters also conceive of the fruits of their ministries and the ability to contribute to the community differently. As Sr. Maryse reflected on her work as a tailor, she talked to me about why she was drawn to the communitarian lifestyle of sisters: “Everything I am going to earn, it is for the congregation.” Describing the produce harvested on the congregation’s farmland, Sr.  Simone also emphasized the communal orientation of her efforts: “When I work, what I make it is not for me. It is for everybody. It is for the province. It is for the congregation. . . . Everything that we make, it comes back here.” Sisters of Notre Dame throughout the world have embraced expansive definitions of spiritual mission and diversified their ministries since Vatican II, but local factors lead American and Congolese sisters to invest themselves and their resources differently. These specific ministry choices are less about variation in the interpretation of Vatican II or adoption of an organizational mission than they are reflections of local context and economic differences between communities in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In recent decades, the relationships between Sisters of Notre Dame in the Global North and South have shifted away from the patterns of direct control and economic dependency that characterized the congregation’s earlier days. As sisters work to transform external societal structures of injustice through their work in the outside world, they have also turned their gaze inward to examine the interior structures of their own organization.27 In the next two chapters, I turn from how sisters arrive at particular ministries to the ways sisters think about the meaning of the work they do in local contexts. Chapter 6 shows that although sisters in Greater Boston have developed more individually focused approaches to work and community life over time, they continue to see their congregationally sponsored ministries as a collective expression of organizational mission and charism. I explore how sisters moved from spiritual mission to practice in the development of these ministries, and I highlight the organizational processes through which sisters identify, prioritize, and respond to local

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needs. Chapter 7 highlights the unique contradictions Congolese sisters face as members of an international religious order that offers access to Western resources in a developing country, and it focuses attention on the local attitudes and mind-sets that sisters describe as obstacles to their work in ministry settings across the region.

SIX

Mission Is Everything Sisters on the Frontiers of Ministry in Greater Boston

I arrived at a noisy Dunkin’ Donuts in Somerville on a Monday afternoon in February and scanned the café, looking for an open table. Two customers stood up to leave, and I sat down at the table in the back, keeping an eye on the front door. Although it was our first meeting, I quickly spotted Sr. Lisa as she entered carrying two thick photo albums in her arms. Even without looking at the distinctive bronze Notre Dame cross around her neck, the simple style of Sr.  Lisa’s closely cropped hair and ankle-length khaki skirt was familiar. As I stood up to introduce myself, Sr. Lisa put me at ease with her warm greeting and boisterous laughter. A dedicated New England Patriots fan, born and raised just north of Boston, Sr.  Lisa had watched the team’s disappointing Super Bowl loss the night before with a group of older sisters in Ipswich. After ordering two coffees, we sat together and began talking about her experiences as a sister over the past thirteen years. As we flipped through the photographs in the first album, Sr. Lisa shared memories of her first ministry experience as a Sister of Notre Dame teaching English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). This was what she calls her “first real learning about what mission is.” One afternoon, Sr. Lisa was helping her student with some immigration paperwork when he put down his pen and said, “Now, teacher, I want to tell you my story.” Lisa stopped the work they were doing and listened to her student explain how he had been forcibly conscripted into working for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. At one point, he tried to escape, and when he was caught, soldiers broke both his feet and threatened his family. Eventually, he faked his own death and escaped to the United States. In the middle of telling the story, the man took off his sneakers, socks, and shirt to show Lisa his scars and disfigured

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feet. He turned to her and said, “Teacher, there are only two people in the world who know my story, you and my mother. I love you like I love my mother.” On the way home that night, Sr. Lisa cried and cried and cried. As she sat reflecting on the story she had been told that evening, she thought to herself, “That’s what mission is: being where you’re needed, and sometimes, it’s just being present.” Sr. Lisa compared the experience of learning formally about the spiritual mission of Sisters of Notre Dame and the experience of putting that mission into practice through ministry: “We’re taught a lot, we read a lot of books, and have conferences about mission, and about going on mission, and about our mission as Sisters of Notre Dame, but I think you really learn it by doing it, and I learned it by doing it.” In conversations with sisters across Greater Boston, members often talked about their mission as being present where there is a need. Historically nested within particular parishes and neighborhoods of Greater Boston, formal understandings of mission among Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur developed alongside global changes in the institutional church. New interpretations of the vow of poverty were put into practice through sisters’ involvement and commitment to the local settings where they had worked for decades. While American sisters look for personal fulfillment as they pursue a diversity of ministries throughout their lives, like described in chapter 5, they also invest their collective energy and resources into the development of congregationally sponsored ministries that represent their understanding of organizational mission and the responsibility to stand with people living in poverty.

Place, Presence, and Praxis in Greater Boston In 1966, Sr. Maura and two other sisters moved out of the large convent on West Broadway in South Boston to the nearby D Street Housing Project, where she would live for the next thirty-one years. Reflecting on this experience, Sr. Maura explained how the decision mirrored her changing understanding of the vow of poverty: Poverty . . . I don’t think about as goods. We moved into the D Street Housing Project, which had the poorest of the poor people. We moved there simply because we wanted to live among the poor. We were not going to cure everything there. . . . But we wanted to be a neighbor and a support to those people. And they were at that time, very poor. . . . We also knew enough to say to people around us in the project (they knew we had full-time jobs, but

Mission Is Everything / 147 come the summer, we had some time) . . . “What services would be the best that we could give to you . . . to help us become more supportive to you?”

As Sr. Maura and her community members talked to their neighbors, the answer was the same—“Have a summer program for kids”—so they decided, “OK, we’ll try.” After discussing the idea with the rest of the order, the group asked for volunteers and chose three sites in close proximity to the D Street Housing Project and two other low-income projects, Old Colony and Mary Ellen McCormick. After long negotiations with a local school, the sisters were able to secure facilities and began banking contributions of construction paper and crayons. They joked that they started Fun in the Sun (or what they sometimes called “Pain in the Rain”) with “about three thousand broken crayons and probably about one thousand sheets of paper  .  .  . and Kool-Aid.” They planned to run the program for children ages three to twelve from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., but on the first day children started showing up at 8:00 a.m. and did not leave until late into the afternoon. At 10:00 a.m. every day that summer, the sisters made Kool-Aid and poured it into small paper cups for refreshment. “We had those three-ounce cups, and you know what?” Sr. Maura asked, smiling. “We used the same cups in the afternoon. We used to say, ‘God, please bless these cups that nobody gets a disease.’ They were so glad to get something really cold and sweet.” That first summer, Sr. Maura estimates they had two hundred children at each site. They borrowed buses and drivers from the schools for field trips but knew that if they were going to continue the program the following year, they needed more funding. After visiting the Fun in the Sun sites, a man from a local community development organization asked to meet with Sr. Maura and her housemates. Sitting down in the sisters’ living room, he asked them one question: “What are you trying to do?” Sr. Maura recalled. “We tried to speak about what was missioning us on to do this, and the very practical end of what we needed. . . . So he’s taking this all down, and then he had something done properly, like a proposal. He brought it to us, and we read it. He was so wonderful with the English language. We hardly recognized ourselves in this little proposal!” Fun in the Sun was awarded five thousand dollars from the Associated Foundations of Greater Boston. When Sr. Maura heard the news, she said it might as well have been five million dollars: “We were just so happy.” With these funds, the sisters bought puzzles for the older children, arts and crafts supplies, and outdoor sporting equipment like balls, bats, and badminton and ten-

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nis racquets. They gained access to a local pool four afternoons a week, and the program continued to grow. “That’s the service I think of with poverty,” Sr. Maura told me, her voice growing softer. After eighteen years, the Sisters of Notre Dame passed Fun in the Sun on to a group of local agencies. “So Fun in the Sun lives on,” said Sr.  Maura, smiling, “but in five different sites. It’s like a missionary kind of thing, where you passed it over to the people, the community people, because we were so tired we couldn’t do it anymore.” At the beginning of my fieldwork, I wondered how, in a country with growing levels of social, economic, and racial inequality, American sisters determine where they are needed and develop a collective response to the needs they determine are most urgent. In the months that followed, I gained the clearest insight into these organizational processes by listening to sisters share stories about how and why they founded particular congregationally sponsored ministries after Vatican II. Some ministries evolved through the initiative of one or two sisters with the encouragement of the congregation and grew beyond the community’s wildest expectations, while others involved more formal discernment among groups of sisters at the province level. Sisters of Notre Dame in Greater Boston were pioneers on the developing frontiers of women’s religious life after Vatican II. As they began to work more directly with people in local neighborhoods, they were less insulated from the inequalities around them and recognized needs that could not be fully addressed through traditional forms of Catholic education. Motivated by the call to live in solidarity with impoverished people, the first Sisters of Notre Dame to move into public housing projects across Boston continued to work in Notre Dame schools at first but spent their time outside the classroom—evenings, weekends, and summer vacations—in the surrounding community. As sisters became more integrated into working-class neighborhoods, they gained knowledge of the people they worked with through lived experience and responded to local needs by pooling whatever resources and expertise they could muster. Sr.  Kathleen, who cofounded Julie’s Family Learning Program, observed the struggles of students in her classroom and asked questions about the deeper challenges facing their families. Sr. Helen listened to mothers in the street while walking home from work and invited them to talk with her in the living room of her community. Sr. Pam hosted potluck dinners in the D Street Housing Project, volunteered for neighborhood leadership positions, and discussed desegregating Boston schools. The wider province conducted informal surveys among new immi-

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grants and stood up to the archdiocese after Cardinal Cushing Central High School closed, leading to the establishment of the Notre Dame Education Center in South Boston. Today many of the small ministries that grew from these experiences have grown into well-funded and widely respected organizations with formal mission statements. At inception, however, these endeavors were “wild and wooly and free,” born from sisters’ movements out of the large convents and into the impoverished neighborhoods where they had worked for over a century. In this chapter, the founding stories of congregationally sponsored ministries in the Massachusetts provinces help crystallize how American sisters move from mission to practice in the post–Vatican II era and shed light on the distinct regional histories of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Greater Boston.

The Formation of the Massachusetts Province “We created this diocese, the Sisters of Notre Dame, as well as the Sisters of St. Joseph,” Sr. Gail told me when we met in Ipswich to talk about her fund-raising work for the congregation. Indeed, Sisters of Notre Dame began to lay the foundation for Boston’s parochial school system soon after they arrived in the city. When sisters Louise de Gonzague, Magdalen, and Mary Stanislaus traveled by train from Ohio to Massachusetts in 1849 to establish a new foundation for the order in Boston, they left behind a thriving network of Catholic parishes and schools in Cincinnati. Working side by side with Bishop Purcell, Sisters of Notre Dame had already helped develop a model for Catholic education in the Cincinnati diocese that would be followed across the Midwest and New England.1 As Catholic churches throughout the country began establishing small parish schools in the nineteenth century, the parish grade school became the primary focus of Sisters of Notre Dame’s ministries in the United States.2 Apart from a short-lived mission in Toledo, Ohio, the foundation in Boston was the first branch of Sisters of Notre Dame to grow from the Cincinnati community.3 At the invitation of Jesuit Fr. John McElroy, the first three Sisters of Notre Dame arrived at St. Mary’s parish in the North End on November 10, 1849.4 Fr. McElroy, an army chaplain and friend of Bishop Purcell, had been introduced to the Sisters of Notre Dame in Cincinnati on his journey west during the Mexican-American War.5 After the war, Fr. McElroy was assigned to an impoverished neighborhood in Boston. As he began his ministries there, he remembered the work of Sisters of Notre Dame in Cincinnati and waited three years for the superior to send members to teach at the parish school.

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The religious and educational landscape that awaited sisters Louise de Gonzague, Magdalen, and Mary Stanislaus in Boston was very different from that in Cincinnati. Founded in 1808 at the same time as the New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown (Kentucky) dioceses, the Archdiocese of Boston included all of New England. There were few Catholic schools in Boston at the time and only two other well-established groups of women religious in the city when they arrived.6 The first Catholic school on record opened in 1820 and was run by Ursuline nuns. When the Ursulines moved across the river to Charleston in 1826, Bishop Fenwick established a day school for boys and girls in the city. Five years later, he invited the Sisters of Charity from Emmitsburg to open a free school for girls.7 While the work of the Sisters of Charity grew, the Ursulines never regained their strength in the region after a mob burned their convent to the ground on Mount Benedict in 1834. The arrival of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1849 was recognized by religious and secular observers alike as a turning point for the development of Catholic education in New England. In its 1901 annual reports, the Department of the Interior noted the difference Sisters of Notre Dame had made in “Catholic Parochial Schools in Eastern Massachusetts”: “The lack of means and scarcity of religious teachers [in Boston] made constancy and progress difficult, but in 1849 a more systematic and very successful movement was begun by the introduction of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur, in Belgium. . . . Their development in the archdiocese has been marked and steady, and today they rank first in number among the religious teaching communities.”8 The Sisters of Notre Dame opened their first school for girls in Boston at St. Mary on Stillman Street. After some initial struggles, their reputation as teachers grew, and pastors in other churches invited sisters to organize schools in their parishes.9 They established communities at St. Patrick in Lowell, St. Joseph in Somerville, St. Mary in Lynn, and Immaculate Conception in Salem but often found themselves teaching in deteriorating buildings and overcrowded classrooms located in church basements.10 Irish immigration and the ensuing nativist backlash provided the backdrop for Sisters of Notre Dame’s early ministries in these working-class parishes. Between 1846 and 1855, approximately 1.5 million Irish immigrants arrived on American shores, many trying to escape the devastation of the 1845 potato famine and the effects of British colonial rule.11 They settled primarily along the Eastern Seaboard, concentrated in New York and Boston where they were among the cities’ most impoverished residents, living in deteriorating housing conditions and vulnerable to cholera, yellow fever,

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typhus, tuberculosis, and pneumonia.12 Through their work with Boston’s Irish Catholic immigrant population, Sisters of Notre Dame encountered the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment running rampant across the state. By 1850, there were thirty-five thousand Catholics living in Boston, making up approximately a quarter of the city’s population.13 The American Party—a nativist anti-immigration, and anti-Catholic political party established in 1852 and also known as the “Know Nothing Party”—quickly rose to prominence in Massachusetts, dominating state politics between 1854 and 1855. In this political climate, protests and the distribution of xenophobic fliers were commonplace.14 The state government established the “Nunnery Committee” to investigate local convents, sending men to search the Notre Dame convents, classrooms, and dormitories in Roxbury and Lowell in March 1855.15 In Lowell, the Sisters of Notre Dame sometimes found themselves at the center of conflicts between nativist mobs from the Know Nothing Party and the city’s Irish residents. When animosity between US-born residents and the low-wage workforce of Irish factory girls in the city’s textile factories peaked in a violent confrontation, Sisters of Notre Dame observed that the nativists “had not counted sufficiently on Irish loyalty and vim.”16 Through their ongoing work and educational efforts with the working-class and immigrant populations of Boston, the Sisters of Notre Dame were soon embedded within the fabric of Irish American communities across the region. After establishing themselves in parish schools, they turned to the growing needs of Catholic working girls and mothers. At St. Mary in the North End, sisters opened a night school and circulating library in 1850, followed by an industrial school in 1858. At St. Patrick in Lowell, they began providing full-time care and “kindergarten surveillance” for the young children of mothers who worked in the mills.17 Over the next decade, Sisters of Notre Dame organized night schools for young women who worked in factories across East Boston, Chicopee, and South Boston.18 They also opened the Boston Academy of Notre Dame at Berkeley Street in 1864, followed by academies in Lowell and Roxbury. During the Progressive era (1890–1920), Belgian influence on the congregation softened as Namur stopped sending Belgian missionaries to Cincinnati in 1890, and the percentage of US-born members grew steadily.19 Like other rapidly expanding congregations of women religious in the United States at the close of the century, many of the women becoming Sisters of Notre Dame were of Irish descent.20 These demographic shifts in the order contributed to changing attitudes regarding the role of Belgian leadership, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Sisters of Notre Dame de

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Namur across the United States were already developing a more distinctly American identity. Fewer Sisters of Notre Dame had a direct connection to the motherhouse in Namur, and some sisters were reluctant to be identified with the late nineteenth-century conservatism of Belgian Catholicism. Under the leadership of Julia McGroarty, the first provincial raised in the United States, US Sisters of Notre Dame began to assert more autonomy within the international structure of the order.21 When the superior general of the congregation, Mo. Marie Julienne, visited the United States in 1922, all the Notre Dame communities east of the Mississippi still belonged to the Cincinnati Province.22 Observing the rapid growth of the congregation in the east, Mo. Marie Julienne made the decision to reorganize Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, DC, into the newly formed Waltham Province. The change marked the most dramatic organizational restructuring in the history of the seventy-three-year-old province. It also meant that Notre Dame’s two institutes of higher education in the East—Trinity College in Washington, DC, and Emmanuel College in Boston—would come under the jurisdiction of the Waltham Province.23 In addition to increasing differentiation between regions, this time period marked the first international endeavors initiated by US sisters. In 1924, the Waltham Province sent missionary sisters to Japan, and in 1929, the Cincinnati Province sent missionary sisters to China. The growth and reorganization of US provinces continued in the following decades. In 1934, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC formed the Baltimore Province, and in 1959, the Waltham Province split into the Massachusetts and Connecticut provinces. As the numbers of young American women entering religious life swelled over the course of the twentieth century, the influence of US Sisters of Notre Dame on the rest of the congregation became more pronounced.24 Mo. Saint-Joseph was elected mother general in 1951 and began her institute-wide visitations with a journey to the United States. Recognizing that not all the Notre Dame practices developed in 1849 were suited to the second half of the twentieth century, Mo. Saint-Joseph implemented a number of significant reforms during her visit. These included giving Sisters of Notre Dame permission to teach in coeducational high schools and dine with members of other religious orders at education gatherings, and introducing Villa Week, a week of relaxation from “physical and mental responsibilities.” The new provincial of the Waltham Province, Sr. Loretto Julia, further embraced this growing spirit of renewal when she took office in 1953. As described by Sr.  Miriam of the Infant Jesus: “The new Sister

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Provincial, Sr. Loretto Julia, was one with Rev. Mo. Joseph de Saint Françoise in her desire for sane and saintly progress, and in her readiness for adjusting to the demands of the times, without any deterioration of the spirit. Broadness of vision, swiftness in grasping problems, and deep understanding and sympathy were but a few of the characteristics which drew the sisters closely to her.”25 As provincial, Sr. Loretto Julia also encouraged members of the Waltham Province to participate in broader efforts like the Sister Formation Movement, which was bringing together congregations of women religious across the country. In 1963, a year after the Second Vatican Council commenced, Sr.  Loretto Julia was elected the first non-European mother general of the congregation. She would lead the congregation through some of its most turbulent years (1963–69), as religious orders around the world underwent the renewal process called for by Vatican II. She would also struggle with the changes and divisions rocking her own home province of Massachusetts, whose sisters initiated many of the most contentious experiments in American religious life. As discordant as these years were, they marked the rise of US leadership within the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

“Wild and Wooly and Free”: The Development of New Ministries in South Boston As I drove down Old Colony Avenue on a Monday in early April, I looked carefully at the signs and warehouses passing by, slowing as I neared the 200 block. At first, I drove right by the old industrial building without stopping. I would have been uncertain I was in the right place except for the swirls of the Notre Dame insignia boldly displayed on the side of the white one-story cinder-block entrance that was a later, incongruent addition to the original brick structure. Constructed in the 1920s, the building that has housed the Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC) since 2008 was at various points a machine shop, milk-processing facility, and warehouse before being converted into modern office buildings in the late 1990s. As I drove around the block, I read the signage: “Educating Adult Learners,” “Notre Dame Education Center Boston,” and “A Place of Hope” were in bright blue-and-yellow lettering. I looked for street parking and made my way back to the front doors, entering a small reception area with a windowed front desk leading to two hallways where the receptionist directed me upstairs to meet with sisters who work in various roles at NDEC. My early conversations with the sisters I met at NDEC gave me a developing sense of how significant the history of the Notre Dame Education

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Center was to understanding the growth of the congregation’s mission in the city. I returned frequently to South Boston in the coming months, and as I met other sisters with ties to this history, my understanding of Notre Dame’s deep roots in the neighborhood grew. I soon came to appreciate that the closing of Cardinal Cushing Central High School marked a critical juncture for Sisters of Notre Dame, bringing into focus both their relationship to the institutional church and their commitment to maintaining a presence in parts of the city where they believe there is a need they are uniquely suited to meet. Originally founded in 1860 as Saints Peter and Paul Grammar School, the school was reopened as Archbishop (later Cardinal) Cushing Central High School in 1944, after a five-year closure during the Great Depression. When the Archdiocese of Boston closed the school in 1992, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur had served in that location for 132 years, and the school held a special place in the hearts of many members. A number of sisters I met were graduates of Cushing who felt the first tug of a religious vocation there. Others taught at the high school and believed deeply in its mission within the city and among its students. Sisters who worked at Cushing when it closed describe the centrally located high school as having a diverse student body of young women from all over the city. The students were “city kids  .  .  . city girls” in the words of Sr. Lynn, who was both a graduate and an administrator there for several years. Although the school was constantly in debt, the Sisters of Notre Dame who ran it were committed to keeping tuition low. They knew if tuition was raised by a couple of thousand dollars more, the school would become unaffordable for many of the middle- and working-class families who sent their daughters there. The last principal of the high school remembers getting down on her knees and praying every time the archdiocese held budget hearings because she knew Cushing was at risk. When the archdiocese announced the decision to close Cardinal Cushing Central High School in December 1991, students and teachers were heartbroken. Many students expressed their anger at the archdiocese openly to whoever would listen: “The girls [students] were beyond anything. They were so angry, they interviewed with any paper that wanted to interview them, and they just said it like it was: ‘We were poor, our tuition wasn’t that high, but we came from lower- and middle-income families.’ . . . They blamed the archdiocese. Yes, they blamed the archdiocese, and they were bitter about its closing.” Sr.  Maura had looked forward to watching girls from all over the city cross West Broadway from Broadway Station into the schoolyard every morning and recalled her anguish as if it were yesterday:

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“I just felt heartbroken. I felt we had a mission to a special group of women that came from all over the city. We didn’t have anybody from the South Shore, and we didn’t have anybody from the North Shore, but we had Dorchester, Roxbury, Everett. It would give us a wonderful thing that we called ‘the Cushing Spirit,’ that only existed in those buildings that made up the whole composition that was the mission of Cardinal Cushing Central High School.” During these first days, Sr. Maura’s only consolation was that Cathedral High School in the South End—which she described as “an immigrant school, a multicultural, multiethnic, wonderful school” with a similar mission—had survived the budget cuts. After announcing the decision to close the high school, the Archdiocese of Boston expected that Sisters of Notre Dame would pack up their bags, leave the property, and move on. Church leaders had underestimated the group of women working there. In Sr. Maura’s retelling, the minute the sisters heard the school was closing, they gathered in the auditorium and said to each other, “Hell, hell, we’re not going! We have been here since 1860, but what can we do?” She explained how concerned sisters came together as a group and began asking each other questions: “If we stay together as Sisters of Notre Dame, and it’s a Notre Dame mission, where will we serve? Who will we serve and what will we do?” Responding to Racial Integration in South Boston This was not the first time the sisters’ ministries in South Boston had placed them in the eye of a hurricane. Working in the neighborhood when opposition to bussing policies and the racial integration of schools erupted in the 1970s was especially challenging. Another local sister spoke less nostalgically of her time teaching at Cardinal Cushing Central High School, recounting the violence and harassment directed at students of color: “I ended up in South Boston during bussing days, and it was a challenge. . . . We saw our minority population leave because it was Louise Day Hicks marching down the street opposed to blacks coming into South Boston where I was. . . . Sometimes the minority students just walking a few steps from Broadway Station to our front door [of the school] would have beer tossed on them or some expletives directed in their regard. Anyhow, we endured that, and we had all kinds of antiracism training going on.” Sr. Vivian, an eighty-two-year-old pastoral associate, reflected on the growing social consciousness among Sisters of Notre Dame at the peak of the bussing protests. Although she was living in East Boston at the time, she remembers how her counterparts went from being the “good little Sisters in South Bos-

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ton” in the eyes of the “good people” they had educated to more polarizing figures when they vocalized support for school integration. Some of the same people educated in their schools were now in the streets marching against desegregation. When sisters stepped outside their traditional roles as teachers to challenge this position, they came face-to-face with local prejudice and hostility. “In South Boston, they’d step off the street to let the sisters go by,” remembered Sr. Vivian. “And so we’re saying, ‘Isn’t that nice?’ But go to a meeting and talk about integration . . . and you get thrown off the sidewalk. One of our sisters actually got pushed into the middle of the street in South Boston. . . . Their expectation of us is that we are good sisters. We are wonderful teachers. ‘You teach our kids, but don’t tell them anything about social justice.’” Sisters of Notre Dame like Maura and Pam, who moved to the South Boston housing projects in the 1960s and 1970s, worked directly with community members as the neighborhood underwent rapid demographic change. In 1975, Sr. Pam watched people of color exit the neighborhood, fearing the violence of their white neighbors. In 1988, the project where she lived was undergoing major renovations and every “little village” needed a coordinator. Sr. Pam decided to leave the parish work she was doing to become first a village coordinator and then, in anticipation of growing diversity within the projects, an integration coordinator. “In the eighties, it was all white,” explained Sr. Pam. “We knew with the renovation of the project that we would be welcoming people of color [and] we needed to prepare for this.” Sr. Pam applied for grants to organize workshops for residents. As new groups of people began moving into the projects, she and other community members hosted potluck suppers and began offering ESOL classes. Although no one could have anticipated it at the time, this community involvement helped lay the groundwork for Notre Dame’s next ministry in the neighborhood. After learning about the closing of Cushing, a group of sisters began to meet weekly. Sr. Michelle, who was part of this unofficial steering committee, remembered, “I went to those meetings and tried to figure out what we were going to do next because we really did not want to close after all of those years. We knew that the service here in South Boston was valuable to the community and to ourselves.” With the goal of determining how Notre Dame might maintain its presence in the area, sisters conducted an unofficial survey that produced two important findings: only 54 percent of South Boston residents had high school diplomas and new groups of Latino and Asian immigrants were moving into the D Street Housing Project, Old Col-

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ony Project, and Mary Ellen McCormick Project. Sr. Michelle described the group’s discernment process: We really felt that the mission and the ministry was strong and there was a great need. We also looked to the future, tried to figure out, What is out there? You know, as Julie would say, “read the signs of the times.” What does the community need? What would be a call that you could respond to? And that’s when we said, “Well let’s broaden our education perspective, and let’s do an adult basic ed center that would work with non-native-Englishspeaking people, people who wanted to get a GED [General Education Development], or people who were immigrants that needed citizenship.”

Making the decision to broaden beyond their traditional education focus, Sisters of Notre Dame acted quickly, convincing the archdiocese to let them use the convent and main school buildings of Cardinal Cushing Central High School. The school closed in June, and the Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC) opened in September, offering programs for adult education, GED programming, and ESOL, as well as resources for immigrants seeking citizenship. For the first few years, NDEC relied on sister volunteers to run the programs without receiving a stipend or salary. The province subsidized the ministry as the project got off the ground, and sisters began applying for grants to secure more permanent funding. Collectively, the members felt good about sustaining a presence in South Boston while moving the mission in a new direction. Sr.  Judy, a seventy-two-year-old immigration case manager, came to work at NDEC after teaching ESOL at St. Patrick in Lowell for two decades. Reflecting on her work in both settings, Sr. Judy placed the growth of NDEC in a broader context: In Notre Dame itself right now, we’re very aware that our work in the elementary schools has changed. We’re not in those schools, and we probably are in maybe five high schools in this area, if there are even five. But we would not give up. . . . When the diocese closed the high school, they [the sisters] refused to give up. They refused to let the property go because we had been there 130 years already. The school closed in June and opened in September as an adult learning program. So it’s education, you know, and some of us here are doing the very basic education of teaching people to learn how to write, learn how to read, and learn how to speak English. So it’s still what Julie would have done herself. We often say, “If Julie were alive today, she’d

158 / Chapter Six fit right in.” There would be no problems with her being part of what we are and where we are today.

Thinking back to those exhilarating first days, Sr. Maura remembers talking with a younger sister: “‘What are we trying to do? What is this place?’ She [the younger sister] is the one that said, ‘The Notre Dame Education Center is a place of hope.’ And that became the first sentence of our mission.” The day NDEC opened, nobody knew whether one person or five hundred people would come, but people kept walking through the door. The coffee and doughnuts disappeared in minutes, and the room hummed with the sounds of multiple languages. Sr. Maura paused a moment in our conversation to enjoy remembering the thrill of that beginning, then went on: It was such a marvelous effort, an experiment. It was an inspiration. It’s so well organized now. But twenty years ago—mission is everything and it still is, but it wasn’t formulated. We kept formulating it by the needs of the people. “We need this; we need that.” We kept it [to] education. We weren’t social service people, but it began to expand—not only education but some other services that were needed, like social services in jobs and citizenship. . . . It’s organized now, and it’s very nice, but there was a certain spirit about the beginning of NDEC that was wild and wooly and free.

Watching Sr. Maura’s blue eyes twinkle when talking about the opening of NDEC, it was clear that she missed these wild, wooly, and free days when NDEC was young. When I thanked Sr. Maura for taking the time to meet with me at the end of our conversation, she told me she enjoyed reliving this history because it brought her out of her slump and back to these heady days when “you could take on anything as long as you were interested and you were capable.” Julie’s Family Learning Program A few weeks later, I stood in front of the historic George White Fund brick building on Dorchester Street. Looking up, I read the words Health Unit engraved below the ornate arch of the limestone entryway and wondered at the sight of the rooftop solarium, which I later learned was used for tuberculosis patients in the late 1920s. As I placed my hand on the heavy double wooden doors, I noticed a small sign in the left corner of one of the door’s windows directing visitors to Julie’s Family Learning Program around the corner. I followed a brick pathway along the side of the build-

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ing, where I noticed a small enclosed outdoor play area, and followed a mother and child who were entering another door. At the front desk, I introduced myself to an older woman with a small Notre Dame pin on her collar who appeared to be working on a crossword puzzle. She directed me to a bench where I waited, admiring the huge yellow sunflowers painted across the white walls of the hallway, which were bathed in sunlight from the windows above. Sr.  Kathleen entered the reception area wheeling an empty double stroller, and I waited before introducing myself. Dressed crisply in black pants, sturdy clogs, and a button-down shirt striped with complimentary greens, yellows, and pinks, Sr.  Kathleen’s greeting was warm. Her blue eyes looked back at me with interest as I thanked her for inviting me to attend the monthly literacy day in her Montessori preschool program. As we walked into the nearby classroom together, she asked a middle-aged teacher with bleached-blond hair if any of the children were missing mothers this morning. There were two boys, but they guided me over to Tommy, who was already seated in a circle with the other children. The other boy, a redhead, appeared older and scowled back when I looked over at him. Most of the children in the circle were sitting cross-legged in front of their parents, mostly white women, and some were sitting in their parents’ laps. Taking my place next to Tommy, a mother pulled out a small rug and invited me to sit on it. I tried to introduce myself to the three-year-old, but he was hesitant at first. We sat together on the ground as the teacher took a seat in front of us, holding up a picture book to read aloud. The story was about “filling everybody’s invisible bucket,” and the illustrations were peopled by characters of all races, ages, and occupations. According to the story, each person has an invisible bucket that can be filled with happy thoughts, compliments, and our relationships to those we love. People who engage in bullying behavior try to take things out of people’s invisible buckets and are “bucket dippers.” When they bucket-dip, they do not get more but lose the good things in their own buckets. After we finished listening to the story, the teacher led us in two songs and began a bookthemed activity. I followed parents to a child-sized table where there were neatly printed instructions, markers, strips of paper, and examples to guide us in writing affirming messages for our own and others’ “buckets.” An hour later, I followed Sr. Kathleen back to her office. For a few minutes, we stood talking in front of two large framed collages of children who have been part of the program, which were prominently displayed on the wall side by side. Wallet-sized school pictures were interspersed with baseball, basketball, first communion, confirmation, and school dance

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photos. Pointing out faces in the collage, Sr. Kathleen wove the stories of the children pictured there with the people I had just met in the class. I listened carefully, trying to follow the multigenerational connections that make up the lineage of the program. Sr. Kathleen shared, “There is hardly a child we’ve had—I don’t want to say 100 percent, because I don’t know everything—but hardly a child that we’ve had that has not graduated from high school . . . and they’re doing wonderful works. It’s amazing.” As we talked, it became clear that Sr.  Kathleen was intimately involved in daily operations of Julie’s Family Learning Program and that her work with these families takes precedent in her life. For example, before Easter, she was invited to do a reading at a Good Friday procession. Then during Holy Week, she received a call from a woman looking for furniture. Shortly after, another woman called telling Sr. Kathleen a relative had died and they were moving all his things. Sr. Kathleen believed the call was a godsend and connected the two people, rearranging her schedule and missing the event in order to be present and help move the furniture. As we sat down in the office to talk about her work in more depth, Sr.  Kathleen explained some of the more formal aspects of the ministry. Julie’s Family Learning Program offers wide-ranging adult, children, and family services Monday through Thursday, which are facilitated by close collaboration between the mothers’ programs on the second floor and the children’s programs on the first floor. The children’s services include infant and toddler child development centers and the Montessori preschool program while the adult services include adult basic education, life skills education, job-readiness training, employment and career counseling, computer literacy, craft-making, and individual and family counseling.26 Julie’s also offers family services such as family literacy, family health education, and family advocacy. When I asked Sr. Kathleen about her personal experiences in this ministry, she seemed less comfortable. Sr. Kathleen grew up in the neighborhood. Her father was a veteran of the Second World War, and when her parents could no longer afford the rent in the place they were living, they moved their growing family into a South Boston housing project. After attending an elementary school run by a group of Polish sisters, Sr. Kathleen met the Sisters of Notre Dame at Cardinal Cushing Central High School. Although she did not typically hang around the sisters or play on the basketball team like many of the other girls who entered at the same time, she was drawn to their work in schools. “We were a city high school,” Sr. Kathleen explained, “so we had some tough situations. We had big classes—like we were fifty in a class—and they were wonderful. They were able to hold it down and

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teach, and they were friendly.” After graduating from high school, Sr. Kathleen worked for a year and entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1957. While teaching elementary school as a newly professed sister in working-class neighborhoods of Boston, Sr.  Kathleen began to notice issues with some children’s attendance. As she paid closer attention to classroom behavior, she realized that many children were in desperate need of physical and material assistance. They needed food. They needed clothing. Some children showed up to school exhausted because they were up all night or their mother was working late. “You just never knew what was going on,” Sr. Kathleen explained. She heard stories about a family member being arrested, the police showing up at a house, or a mother struggling to raise her children without any support. It became clear to Sr. Kathleen that if the sisters were going to help children growing up in these difficult circumstances, “[they] had to be involved with the families.” She told me, “Children couldn’t do it by themselves; the family has to work together.” After finishing Montessori training, Sr.  Kathleen and another sister, Brynn, developed a program in South Boston for very young children with a focus on family involvement. Julie’s Children’s House opened in 1974, and parents who enrolled their children in the program agreed to monthly home visits with the goal of engaging family members in their child’s education and development. Sr.  Kathleen and Sr.  Brynn were specifically attracted to Maria Montessori’s philosophy because “there is a sense of honor and there is a sense of peace.” Sr. Kathleen reflected, “I think that’s the miracle: watching them, that they can do it, and it works. Every child who leaves us is reading, knows the numbers, can add, subtract, and they are six. And it’s not because we’re standing there going, ‘Knock it off.’” Meanwhile, another sister who eventually helped cofound Julie’s Family Learning Program was living in a South Boston housing project when her work with mothers began to develop. On her walks home from the parish school where she taught junior high, Sr.  Helen would meet local mothers and talk with them about the challenges they were facing. As these conversations become more frequent and her walk home became longer and longer, Sr. Helen reached the conclusion that it was not the children but the mothers who needed her. She began meeting with four women in the front room of her community, talking about the Gospel. Through Sr. Helen’s work with mothers living in the projects, she was able to help Sr. Kathleen identify families that might be interested in sending their children to Julie’s Children House. In 1980, Sr. Kathleen and Sr. Helen formalized their collaboration as Julie’s Children’s House and Sr.  Helen’s adult learning program merged into Julie’s Family Learning Program.

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Securing space at the South Boston Boys and Girls Clubhouse in 1986, Julie’s Family Learning Program gradually expanded, opening a room for infants and toddlers, hiring more staff, and applying for state funds. The program built a strong relationship with the city, and in 2004, Mayor Tom Menino helped the organization secure the old health center building on Dorchester Street that had been vacant for a number of years. Sr. Kathleen remembers that local unions “were very, very good to us” as they worked with sisters to convert the clinic into an educational space. Sr. Kathleen smiled as she recalled the humble beginnings of the program, when she was baking bread at night and selling it on the weekends to raise funds for the ministry: “What was another fund-raiser . . . we did? Horseracing!” She laughed and shook her head. “The order was wonderful to us. Excellent. Excellent. I mean, for a while, we weren’t giving them any money, but that was OK because we were doing Julie’s work.” Reflecting on how the founding mission of the order is expressed through this ministry, Sr. Kathleen emphasized, “We were doing Julie’s work, to work with poor children, the poor families, the mothers in particular, mothers and children. That’s what she did in France ages ago, when she worked in the fields. It was women and children she worked [with] because the men were out fighting in the wars. . . . That’s why we did it, Julie’s Family [Learning Program], because it’s definitely her work. . . . Every once in a while, I’ll say, ‘Julie, come on! We need something.’” Today many of the ministries that began with a few sisters identifying and responding to needs in the surrounding community are more settled. Some programs, like Fun in the Sun, were passed on to other groups in the community, and a few eventually closed, like St.  Julie’s Asian Center in Lowell. Although thriving congregationally sponsored programs and organizations, such as NDEC and Julie’s Family Learning Program, remain dynamic and constantly evolving, they now have more clearly defined organizational structures, well-established avenues of financial support, and formal mission statements. The Sisters of Notre Dame who first pioneered the move out of convents are now in their eighties. Some still live in the housing projects, while others have moved to middle-income blocks nearby in search of a “backyard and a little bit of grass in front.” Through the lifework of these women, Sisters of Notre Dame resisted the comfortable midcentury suburbanization of US Catholicism and the Archdiocese of Boston’s parochial school system. They reentered the types of communities in Greater Boston where their foremothers—sisters Louise de Gonzague, Magdalen, and Mary Stanislaus—had first been asked to serve, working with mothers, children, and immigrants in poor neighborhoods

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of the city. In the next section, I turn to sisters’ continued presence in Catholic schools and address some members’ ambivalence regarding the order’s work with more affluent groups of people in Notre Dame academies.

Catholic Schools “I am one happy nun!” Sr. Genie told me as we sat down together in her office at the Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Wearing a sharp red blazer and black skirt with loafers, Sr.  Genie exuded energy, speaking quickly and confidently as she began telling me about the founding of the school. In contrast to the other ministries I had visited across South Boston that spring, Notre Dame Cristo Rey (NDCR) evolved from a much more formal process of research, evaluation, and sponsorship. Sr. Genie was working for the Ipswich Province when she received a call from a sister in leadership. One of the cofounders of the Cristo Rey Network was looking into new sites for schools across the nation and asked the Sisters of Notre Dame if they would consider collaborating to open one in Boston. Founded by Jesuits in 1996, the first Cristo Rey serves the communities of Pilsen and Little Village on the near southwest side of Chicago.27 In order to fund the school, Jesuits partnered with local businesses, using a work-study model that became the basis for other Cristo Rey schools across the nation.28 With an advanced degree in administration and experience working with Notre Dame schools around issues of mission, Sr. Genie was interested in the opportunity and told leadership, “Why not?” Sr. Genie worked for two years on a feasibility study in Boston and Lawrence. Although the Cristo Rey Network was initially only interested in sponsoring a school in Boston, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur had been working in Lawrence for over 150 years and wanted to do a parallel study there. Nobody had ever asked the network to run two feasibility studies at the same time, but they agreed to fund them. At the end of the two years, the sisters concluded there was a need for schools in both places. “Now the issue became what to do,” explained Sr. Genie. There was a school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Boston that was on the verge of closing so it became a “conversion school,” transitioning from a typical diocesan school to the Cristo Rey model. Although the network had concerns about founding a Cristo Rey school outside a metropolitan area because of the workstudy component, Sisters of Notre Dame were convinced that there was a need for the school in Lawrence, one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts. In Genie’s words,

164 / Chapter Six It was really clear that Catholic education for the poor was desperately needed out here in Lawrence. The network raised some red flags for us, and the chief red flag was the jobs. We weren’t in a metropolitan city, so they felt it was going to be a struggle for us to get jobs. They were absolutely 100 percent accurate on that. It has been a struggle. However, the sisters believed that we were in the poorest city in Massachusetts and since our documents say we are to go to the poor and the most neglected places, we felt that this city was where we wanted to open up our school. [We were] going in with our eyes wide open, knowing that the job component was going to be an uphill battle.

When it came time to approve plans for the new project, sisters across the Ipswich Province “unanimously agreed to open the school,” and Sr. Genie watched members come alive with the new mission: “I think what I noticed, Casey, [what] happened when that decision was made—our sisters came alive. And they came alive because for so long, we had been closing, closing, closing, and to open up something for the poor meant new life for our sisters. And so, they really have embraced this mission. They have absolutely embraced it.” The Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence opened in 2004, and Sr.  Genie was eventually invited to take an administrative position there. Sr. Genie has been working in various roles at NDCR since then and told me, “I am absolutely doing what I believe I should be doing. I’m still in education, and I am working with the poor. So for me, it’s a dream come true. Absolute dream come true.” Sr. Genie told me several times that what the congregation is doing at NDCR is the Notre Dame mission. “This is the mission!” she said as she punched her fist into the palm of her hand like an exclamation point. Sr. Genie’s work at NDCR stands in contrast to her previous positions. She spent most of her life as a Sister of Notre Dame working with the materially advantaged and long struggled with her placements in privileged institutions. Although Sr. Genie always managed to create partnerships and programs for social outreach in whatever position she held, she remained unsettled. Over time, she began to doubt that she was capable of working in ministries for low-income people because the congregation had missioned her to so many other places: I mean, I always knew I wanted to be in education, even before I entered the Sisters of Notre Dame, and I always knew I wanted to work with the poor,

Mission Is Everything / 165 and I just never had the opportunity. Notre Dame kept missioning me to all these places for the wealthy, and I was in a lot of them. And you know, I would say, you know, “Can I go to one of the poorer schools?” “Well, no, no, no, no. We want you to go to the academy,” or . . . “We want you to go to this school in the city,” you know. So I was always for some reason placed there, and my heart was always questioning because when I entered Notre Dame, I knew they were an education order for the poor. And I was doing my education because I was doing education no matter where I was, but it was the element of the poor that I didn’t have. . . . I really actually started doubting myself as to whether I was even capable of working with the poor. Is that why Notre Dame had missioned me to all these other places?

When Sr.  Genie began working on issues of sponsorship, her feelings of discomfort only grew: “All of a sudden it became really clear to me that we are not serving the poor in our schools. The tuitions were outrageous in all of these places. Even [in] the elementary schools, the tuitions were high. . . . When this opportunity came along with the possibility of opening up a Catholic school for the poor and a way of funding it . . . I couldn’t say no to it. I said, ‘Absolutely. Positively.’” Comparing her experience teaching in academies for nine years to the work she now does at NDCR, Sr. Genie posed many of the same questions that have guided the formation of smaller congregationally sponsored ministries since Vatican II: What does the community need? Whose interests will the presence of Sisters of Notre Dame serve? Her recent experiences working with low-income students has influenced her view of where the congregation should focus its efforts in the future: I have to say, I’ve loved everywhere I’ve been, I really have. . . . But I also felt, and often times I would say to myself, “All right, if this school closed, if for some reason this academy closed, would these children have the opportunity to go to other Catholic elementary or high schools in the area?” And the answer was always yes. When I kept coming up with that yes, then [I asked], “Why are we continuing here when there are so many needs elsewhere?” Part of our mission is to address the needs as they become aware to us. . . . We always say we’re called to read the signs of the times. It’s in all of our literature. What does that mean, and how do we take that to heart? . . . [In the academies,] we always say that we’re training the leaders of tomorrow. It’s kind of a crapshoot. You’re not sure you are. We hope we are, but you’re never really sure, you know. Whereas here I know [we are] providing an education for

166 / Chapter Six kids that would never have the opportunity for [one otherwise]. This type of an education is a win-win. . . . Every one of them, rather than hoping, you know, [every] one of them will get to college. I mean, for five years, we’ve had every graduate accepted to college. . . . I keep saying this is St. Julie’s school. St. Julie, I am sure, is thrilled with this school. Absolutely positively.

Sr. Genie was not the only sister I met who contrasted her commitment to what she perceives as mission-driven ministries that meet the greatest needs of the surrounding communities to Notre Dame academies, where the tuition is high and the students come from financially secure families. Many expressed their personal preference for ministries that serve those with greater economic needs. Sr.  Lisa, age forty-seven, turned down a position in an academy, explaining, “I’m working in a ministry that has grabbed me, and I’m working in the ministry where there’s a need, and I think now to go and serve in a school where I’d be working with more wealthy people would damage my spirit.” Sr. Linda, a sixty-seven-year-old teacher at NDEC, felt the same way: “I’ve always been in poor places because that’s where I feel I should be. Other people can do the jobs in the la-di-da academies, but that’s not me.” Other sisters questioned how academies align with the mission of the order at a more fundamental level. Sisters of Notre Dame have been teaching in elite academies since the earliest days of the congregation, when Julie and Françoise opened day schools for middle-class girls and academies for the wealthy in order to support free schools for girls living in poverty. Despite the long history of this educational model, many sisters expressed ambivalence regarding whether the congregation (or they themselves) should be allocating precious time and resources to academies. One sister directly addressed the broader tension between the congregation’s mission to serve the “destitute poor” and the need to have financial support in order to do so. “In my time in Notre Dame, in working with the nonpoor,” she told me, “we’ve always said that we’re creating leaders that can be those effective change agents for the needs of those living in poverty. I believe that, but I think it needs to be selective. I don’t think just because you have a canned goods drive, you’re changing people’s visions and attitudes. Maybe you are, but I can’t quite fathom that.” Another sister commented that while she can tell when she meets someone who was educated by Notre Dame in the 1950s and 1960s, she worries it is becoming more difficult to recognize the Notre Dame charism in the students they have educated in more recent decades. Sr.  Judy expressed more widespread concern regarding the outcomes of Catholic education. Observing a lack of empathy and concern among

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Catholic-educated local leaders in Boston leaves her frustrated and deeply disappointed. “I think the whole piece of education is very worrisome,” Sr. Judy said, then paused to carefully articulate her thoughts: The fact that many of the leaders—let’s just say in Massachusetts—have been trained in Catholic institutes and have been successful—many of them are good, good people, but many of them are not. . . . Who am I to judge? But I don’t see the care and concern I would expect coming from the training and the education that they’ve had. It’s disappointing to see the results. However,  that’s what it means to educate, I think. You present, you lead, and then you let go, and that person has to make it on their own one way or another.

Reflecting on the direction of Catholic education and the place of Sisters of Notre Dame within it, each of these women asked similar types of questions: Are our ministries accomplishing our mission? After students graduate from our schools, what kinds of lives are they leading? Not all members of the provinces doubted the place or importance of Notre Dame academies among the congregation’s ministries in Greater Boston, however, and these views were more common among sisters with experiences working in social ministries focused on direct service. In contrast, a sister who taught in academies for forty years argued that raising social consciousness and global awareness among students and creating innovative service-learning opportunities form an important part of the curriculum in these institutions. She also drew attention to the examples of graduates who have gone on to hold important leadership positions in the public and private sectors. Among the sisters I met, however, it was clear that while Sisters of Notre Dame continue to see themselves as educators because of their history, religious formation, and personal experiences, they no longer view traditional classroom settings as their natural habitat. Older sisters became animated as they described the move from convents and parochial schools to smaller communities and neighborhood ministries. Sisters who joined after Vatican II appear equally committed to the ministries that have developed outside traditional Catholic institutions.

Conclusions After Vatican II, sisters in the greater Boston area began chipping away at some of the barriers separating them from their neighbors. Wearing a religious habit had been an obstacle at times, setting them apart from other

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people. Living in convents sheltered them from many of the ordinary problems and responsibilities that are a part of everyday life outside large structured institutions. The growing affluence of suburban Catholics and closing of inner-city schools encouraged Sisters of Notre Dame to think about education in more expansive and inclusive ways. Older notions of Catholic charity to the destitute or less fortunate did not hold the same resonance as sisters began to ask communities about their needs rather than assume they knew what they were. In Notre Dame ministries across Boston, there was a developing sense of mutuality that was made possible, in part, by sisters breaking open their lifestyles and rethinking how they engaged with surrounding communities. This mutuality enabled Sisters of Notre Dame to ask their neighbors how they could best support them and to be open to where that response might lead. At Julie’s Family Learning Program, some of the women who are now teachers with college degrees were once mothers seeking support. The Fun in the Sun summer program that sisters in South Boston ran for eighteen years was passed on to other groups in the neighborhood that were prepared to take ownership of it. This mutuality also enables sisters to recognize how much they gain as individuals and as a community from their ministries. When Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School was established, Sr. Genie said she watched members “come alive” seeing a school open after they had closed so many. The endeavor “meant new life” for sisters in Lawrence. The opening of the Notre Dame Education Center also reignited sisters in South Boston after the heartbreak of watching Cardinal Cushing Central High School close. Although sisters could not stop the archdiocese from closing the school, their grassroots presence in the neighborhood helped them recognize other educational needs in the area that were not being addressed. There is no question that barriers remain between sisters and people in the communities where they minister. Although religious life has changed dramatically, the lifestyle of a Catholic sister is still unique. The tremendous communal resources of religious orders mean that when a member moves into a public-housing project or creates a new ministry where none existed before, there is a strong foundation of community support she can fall back on if the need arises. Sisters of Notre Dame belong to a broad social network that can be tapped to pay an unexpected hospital bill, recruit volunteers for a project, or retrain for a new ministry. Even as sisters’ religious roles become less distinct from other Catholic laywomen in the United States, core elements remain at the heart of apostolic religious life. Without the constraints of domestic life or the imperative of earning a liv-

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ing wage, American Sisters of Notre Dame are able to dedicate themselves fully to their work and the education it may require. As members of a community that supports their lifestyle and draws strength from a common history and spirituality, Sisters of Notre Dame also have a shared vocabulary through which to communicate the value and meaning of their work to one another. As I talked with Sr. Michelle about the strengths she brings as a sister to her work at NDEC, she expressed gratitude for the encouragement she received from the Sisters of Notre Dame to pursue higher education, but she also underscored the great competence and reflectiveness that other laypeople contribute to the organization. She paused to think for another minute and continued, focusing on the importance of having a spiritual mission: “To have Julie’s charism of better mistakes [rather] than paralysis [guiding us]—wow, just to take that phrase, better to make a mistake than to be paralyzed and not move forward. . . . So the gift of that kind of spirit that allowed you to make mistakes—better do that than to live in fear. Julie’s charism and Julie’s words were very solid inspiration.” At the end of our conversation, Sr. Michelle described the opportunities she has had to observe that spiritual mission animating Notre Dame ministries locally and across other regions of the country: I think what my experiences of going around [the country]—and even here, when you go to our ministry around the corner, which is Julie Family Learning Program. . . . What happens is you see Julie’s charism and the charism of the Sisters of Notre Dame being lived out. It’s real, it’s not just words, it’s not just the constitutions in a book; it’s Sisters of Notre Dame every single day living out the values of compassion, and love, and simplicity, educating in any way they can. It has changed me because I know that what we do and the learning that we get from those who we serve—because it’s a twoway street—is very, very powerful. . . . Sisters respond in their ministries to a whole array of people and . . . people in turn . . . you’re blessed by them. They give you the strength to go on, they give you the reason to keep coming, to live every day. They join you in the effort. It’s just wonderful. We’ve learned more from our students here than you can ever imagine about courage, about overcoming barriers, about loving and wanting to be determined to reach your goals. It kind of validates why I’m here.

For Sr.  Michelle and many other Sisters of Notre Dame in the United States, being a part of ministries that reflect their understanding of the mis-

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sion, spirit, and history of the congregation brings a sense of fulfillment and validation. Sisters of Notre Dame are not the growing army of educators across the Archdiocese of Boston that they once were, but the sense of mutuality and partnership with people in the communities where they minister has become a source of consolation and hope as they continue their work into the future.

SEVEN

Poverty, Development, and the Challenges of Catholic Sisterhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo

At age fifty-eight, Sr. Lylie has enjoyed a number of opportunities to travel and work outside the country as a Sister of Notre Dame. She says she “really traveled” for the first time when visiting the motherhouse in Namur, Belgium, as part of the Julie Renewal Program. More recently, Sr. Lylie was missioned to Nigeria, teaching for two years before being sent to the Notre Dame community in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where she has lived for the past year. Reflecting on her experiences with Sisters of Notre Dame in other parts of the world, Sr. Lylie emphasized the unity she has observed across locations: “One sees that we are all fighting for the same goal. We have the same spirit.” Although Sr. Lylie believes Sisters of Notre Dame all share the same goals, she has experienced firsthand the very different conditions under which they work to achieve these goals. A forceful woman with strong opinions, Sr.  Lylie was most passionate when she compared public infrastructure in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While she found that Nigerian sisters organize community life very similarly, local living conditions make an enormous difference in how sisters carry out their missions. Returning home, Sr. Lylie viewed problems in the interior of her own country with fresh eyes and a heightened sense of urgency: “We have the same ministries everywhere, yes, but the difficulties which we have in our ministries—it is the state of the road. The road is very bad. I want to talk about our country—only our country—because I was in Nigeria. They don’t have bad roads like here. It’s really very hard. We are working, but it is difficult because of the roads. It’s really painful, especially when it rains during rainy season. And those difficulties are not the fault of the SND.” Sr.  Lylie believes that responsibility for Congo’s poor infrastructure rests squarely with the government. However, at the end of our conversa-

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tion, she began to reflect on all the transportation problems that would be solved if the congregation could buy Congolese sisters an airplane. “We know that it costs a lot, but perhaps even a helicopter . . . ?” The US sister sitting with us in one of the shaded pavilions on the grounds of the provincial house shook her head “I don’t think that is going to happen . . . the congregation buying [it]? C’est un beau rêve [It is a beautiful dream]!” While Sr. Lylie was the only sister I met who proposed a congregational airplane or helicopter as a solution to problems of development in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sisters throughout the province shared their struggles to respond to the needs of the surrounding population in the context of poverty, weak public infrastructure, political unrest, and government corruption. Across the region, sisters face the consequences of the state’s “poor management of public goods” such as health care and education. Historically, Sisters of Notre Dame have worked in cities, villages, and rural areas outside the capital city of Kinshasa, with people of limited means. Living in a context where poverty is a close and inevitable daily reality, the women I talked with did not express any ambivalence regarding whom they should be serving or in what types of institutions they should work, as was the case among some American sisters. Instead they pointed to the challenges of working with a very poor population in a very poor country. Limited resources are defining aspects of each new mission the province undertakes, regardless of its particular focus. Sisters also grapple at a more personal level with what the vow of poverty means when they are unable to help struggling family members or are asked to explain their relatively high standard of living within the communities where they minister. Most sisters are only one step removed from the economic difficulties experienced by family and friends who struggle to find steady work in an economy where unemployment and corruption are pandemic. Although the Congo-Kinshasa Province is working to achieve greater economic independence from the West, material resources in the congregation continue to flow from sisters in the United States and Europe to those in Africa and South America. These resources take many forms, from SUVs and computer monitors to educational programs and opportunities. While such resources form a critical dimension of the relationships between members in the Global South and Global North, as described in the previous chapters, they also have important implications for Congolese sisters in their everyday lives. In this chapter, I elaborate on the unique contradictions sisters face as members of a transnational religious order that provides access to substantial communal resources but limits their ability

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to provide personal assistance to kin. I highlight how Congolese sisters interpret and experience the vow of poverty before addressing local attitudes and mind-sets that sisters describe as obstacles to their work in ministry settings across the region. In addition to the terrible conditions of the roads and the traffic this causes—both popular topics of conversation—members shared frustration with misconceptions regarding their standard of living as sisters, the difficulty of funding Notre Dame schools, and their work to overcome local preferences for educating boys in the villages where they teach. Sisters also addressed political corruption and state violence, which limits their ability to play a more prominent role in public life and undermines efforts to achieve broader systemic change.

Church-State Relations in the Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the highest incidences of poverty in the world, despite a wealth of natural resources, which include minerals, precious metals, and 80 million hectares of arable land.1 Forty percent of its 77 million citizens live in urban areas, and on the most recent United Nations Human Development Index, the Democratic Republic of Congo was ranked 176 out of 188 countries.2 Notorious for its lack of infrastructure, it is considered “road-poor.”3 The population relies on an estimated 0.04 kilometers of paved road per 1,000 inhabitants.4 The deteriorating routes connecting people across the second-largest country in Africa (2,344,858 square kilometers) is both a physical and symbolic reflection of the state of public services in the country.5 Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are directly impacted by these government shortfalls. Across the country, Catholic religious orders step in to fill critical institutional gaps, providing education and health care through their own organizations as well as partnerships with the government. These partnerships have led to an uneasy relationship with the state, which is at once collaborative and oppositional. For Sisters of Notre Dame, the complicated nature of contemporary church-state relations is most evident in the Congolese education system, which has been dominated by the Catholic Church since its establishment.6 The history of “cooperation and competition” between the church and the state in the Democratic Republic of Congo dates back to the second evangelization of Congo—a state of affairs that is not uncommon throughout Africa, where missionary churches were often more involved in education than colonial governments.7 In the Belgian Congo, the colonial administration did not begin developing a public school system

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until the 1950s.8 Religious networks continued to provide most education until President Mobutu’s brief nationalization of schools between 1974 and 1977. In 1977, the education system was on the brink of collapse without church support or personnel. To bring an end to this crisis, state and church representatives signed a convention for the management of national schools, establishing a dual education system of official “nonconvention” schools managed by the state and “convention-based” schools managed by religious networks.9 Although the state assigned the management of convention-based schools to churches, it retained organizational power over the entire education sector. According to recent reports, conventionbased schools provide education to three-quarters of Congolese students, and 50 percent of these students are educated in Catholic schools. In principle, both types of schools are publicly financed. However, since the economic crisis and structural adjustment policies of the 1980s, the state’s investment per pupil dropped from $159 in 1982 to $7 in 2006. As originally advocated by the World Bank, parents have become the primary source for collecting additional funds for education. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, this policy has taken its most extreme form through a de facto privatization of the education system in which schooling is provided mainly by churches and paid for mainly by parents. As the largest provider of education in the country, the Catholic Church occupies the ambivalent position of collecting these school fees, despite its various attempts to oppose and reform the parental fee system.10 Although churches are often overlooked in discussions of state reconstruction in Africa, they are among the most prominent national institutions in most African countries today.11 Looking broadly at the influence of Catholicism across the continent, Paul Gifford argues that the Catholic Church is the single largest development organization in Africa, unrivaled in health care and education. Religious orders provide a large portion of the financial and human resources that make this work possible as members train church personnel and tap their own donor bases to sponsor schools, clinics, and other social services. While bishops across the continent make public statements and promote Vatican positions, priests and nuns are on the front lines of development work, actively engaged in human rights and justice and peace issues as well as their more traditional ministries in schools and health centers.12 Unlike most Protestant churches that raise money locally and tend to be “self-governing, self-propagating, and self-funding,” the Catholic model relies heavily on external overseas funding.13 Describing a process of

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“NGO-ization,” Gifford argues African Catholicism has achieved its “high visibility, its appeal, its status” through public services rather than religion: “An enormous amount of Christian involvement is not obviously about relating to the divine; it is most obviously about access to Western resources and the whole range of things this brings: education, health, employment, global opportunities. This Christianity brings not so much redemption as development. . . . It operates with a vocabulary not so much of atonement, sacraments, conversion, as one of micro-finance, capacity building, and women’s empowerment. . . . Its sacraments are as much computer software and SUVs as bread, wine, and oil.”14 While Gifford paints a convincing picture of Catholic development efforts across Africa, we know less about the ways religious orders think about this development work on the ground or how the variation in sisters’ charisms, ministries, and distinct regional histories shape their involvement and approach. Not all groups of African sisters have adopted the ubiquitous vocabulary of sustainable development in their work with local people. Studying two orphan support organizations near Kampala, anthropologist China Scherz finds that a group of Ugandan sisters understand the practice of charity as a form of prayer and reciprocation of God’s love.15 The material forms of Catholic charity they provide to villagers set them apart from other international development initiatives in the region and is more closely aligned with local Kiganda cultural ethics of interdependence. Ugandans who interact with these groups view the predominant focus on sustainability and self-reliance among nongovernment organizations as a refusal to redistribute wealth rather than a means to independence or empowerment. According to Scherz, Western assumptions about the negative effects of dependence for those who receive charity lead scholars and members of the international development community to disregard locally valued forms of material aid and “hierarchical care” that intersect with Catholic ethics in some cultural settings.16 Like Scherz, I take a more local view of the internal tensions Congolese sisters face within their ministries. Apart from questions of self-reliance and dependency, addressed earlier in chapter 5, the visibility and distribution of Western resources in Notre Dame communities are riddled with contradictions for sisters as they try to explain their way of life to relatives and to people in the communities where they work. Struggling to convey the meaning of the vow of poverty to outsiders who may have misconceptions about their lifestyle, sisters must personally reconcile this vow with the destitute poverty outside the convent. Through their education ministries, sisters are placed in the challenging position of brokering rela-

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tionships between the government and parents of their students as they collect school fees to pay teachers who are not sisters. At their dispensaries and hospitals, sisters respond to criticism from patients who do not want to pay for services and accuse them of being “expensive.” Although this work is challenging, sisters also told me it was worthwhile. Aware of the educational and professional opportunities they enjoy as women in a transnational religious order, Sisters of Notre Dame work to increase girls’ access to schooling in the villages where they teach and to change local attitudes that limit women’s potential. At the end of this chapter, I reflect on the country’s fragile political situation and return to how the nature of church-government relations in the Democratic Republic of Congo influence Catholic sisters’ abilities to accomplish the goals of their ministries and affect broader social change.

Living the Vow of Poverty in the Congo-Kinshasa Province “Now I Belong to Another Family” Before I arrived in Kimwenza, American sisters who had visited the CongoKinshasa Province told me that Congolese members really live the vow of poverty. When I spoke with Congolese sisters, however, they told me a different story and frequently pointed out that their standard of living is higher than that of people who dwell in the surrounding areas. While sisters live simply in convents with almost no personal income, they are rich in communal resources when compared to other locals. Sisters of Notre Dame are keenly aware that they enjoy three meals a day and reside in well-maintained compounds with cars, running water, and electricity. While there are frequent power outages throughout the country, Notre Dame communities have access to generators and the solar power of the African Photovoltaic Project, which provides nearly uninterrupted service. Sisters of Notre Dame are also more likely to have access to computer labs and the internet. Sr. Sylvie, who spent twelve years working at one of the Notre Dame women’s development centers, described the discomfort she feels when comparing her standard of living to that of others she encounters in the city: “The way in which I live in relation to people, to other people who suffer in the city . . . I am well fed, well clothed, and sometimes it is very bad to see people outside who are dirty, who are lacking something to eat, to wear, in comparison [to me]. There are times it bothers me in relation to how I present myself and [compared to] those who stay in the city.” A longtime American missionary echoed these sentiments, arguing

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that poverty is the hardest vow to live in Congo as you reconcile “how you express your vow of poverty when you are living in comparative wealth amongst poor people.” Taking a vow of poverty poses particular challenges for Congolese sisters as they try to explain their lifestyle and standard of living to family members and to people in the communities where they work. Poverty and economic needs touch most sisters on a personal level through their own experiences and those of family members in the places where they were raised. Growing up surrounded by poverty in the villages of Kinkosi and Luidi, Sr.  Pascal, age fifty-seven, understands the perception outside the convent that sisters have everything they need because of her own background. Now, in her role as bursar, Sr. Pascal manages community funds and makes financial decisions for the province daily. Although it is painful, she explains that she cannot help her own family because she works for “the unit,” and everything she has belongs to her congregation. The same vows that free Congolese sisters from the constraints of marriage, children, and domestic life as they dedicate themselves fully to ministry may make it impossible for them to assist their own families when facing financial struggles or illness. Just as the vow of chastity places Sisters of Notre Dame in conflict with the filial obligation to bring forth the next generation by bearing children, the vow of poverty means sisters cannot fulfill the traditional Kongolese responsibility to share resources and care for kin. Sr. Élodie explained that after she took her vows, the congregation became her family. What she once owed her family as an African, she now owes to her religious community: “It’s a challenge for us Africans. A big challenge because . . . the more you earn [the more] you have to share it with people. In religious life, all that I earn I must put [in the community]. Afterward when you see parents, relatives, nieces who suffer, but [you] do not give them anything—that is very difficult for Africans. One must go beyond those ties to consider one’s community one’s family. . . . I renounce my family, and now I belong to another family.” Sr. Clémence also underscored the tensions between her identity as an African and as a religious sister: “You see, Africans are very social beings, and we are family oriented. As a religious, I am not able to meet the needs of the extended family. I made the vow of poverty, so what we have belongs to the community and is not for me to distribute.” Although trained as a nurse, Sr. Clémence cannot leave the community to go personally care for a family member who is ill. “Even if a person is sick in my family,” she explained, “I could not assist that person in the same way, [as] if I was not in the convent.” Sisters feel the vow of poverty most intimately as they witness their own

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family members struggle. Sr.  Mamy and Sr.  Geneviève told me how personally difficult it was when their mothers became ill. Both women had to rely on siblings to provide care and support during this time. Sr. Geneviève confided, “Sometimes my mother is sick and I am not there. . . . That really is a difficulty. I don’t have money, and it makes me suffer because it is my [own] mother.” Sr.  Mamy, who was in the midst of coping with her mother’s illness, regretted that sometimes she does not even have the five hundred Congolese francs she needs for public transportation to visit her in up-country: “You see how it is challenging me? It is challenging me because now it is my . . . brother and my sister who are taking care of my mom. And myself, I could not even give her something. That is a challenge. Or when I see in the community [that] we have many things, but I could not take and give [them] to my mother. That is a challenge.” A sister who studied in the United States questioned some of these constraints. Sr. Victoire, age forty-three, lamented, “Sometimes I see a sister and she is in the back room and she is crying . . . her father is seriously sick. Nothing to do. The sister cannot go, and then the father dies. Sometimes the road is too bad. She wanted to be there. The father is already buried because family is not the priority [as a sister]. Now I find it difficult.” While the relatively high standard of living within convents makes it hard for sisters to explain why they cannot offer personal assistance to family members in need, most sisters felt they could convey these limitations to those closest to them. According to Sr. Odette, however, it was more challenging with extended kin “who believe that it is not true we live a life of poverty.” When I asked Sr.  Odette how she explains the vow of poverty to those who misunderstand it, she explained, “[I] tell them that everything I produce, everything I have, everything I receive, it is for the congregation; it is for my community. That is my vow of poverty—that I don’t have things that belong to me. Everything belongs to the congregation, even my person . . . even the salary I receive.” Sr.  Colette shared the story of trying to educate her family about the vow of poverty, and the sadness she feels when she is unable to fulfill cultural expectations. “We have the poor in our family,” she told me. “I was saying this today to a sister. [I have to] educate my family that I made that vow publicly. They cannot realize [understand] that.  .  .  . You see a niece coming to you, ‘Give me this, give me this. I don’t have it.’ Sometimes you are sad because we have our custom . . . [that] we have to take care of them. We have our culture, and you are sad telling them, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have it.’” Sr.  Louise compared her situation to that of her younger sister, who works as a lawyer and can contribute financially to the family: “To conse-

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crate oneself to religious life is good for you, but a bit difficult for the family. My sister is the one who can give to the family. I am a religious. I don’t have that right, because for me, everything is owned by the community. Sometimes people can say, ‘Why doesn’t the [religious] sister give?’ Other people might say, ‘What? You are a religious, always at home; you don’t want to share with others?’ . . . So people ask that.” “Oh the Sisters, the Sisters Are Expensive!” Outside of their own families, the perception of sisters’ access to Western resources poses a problem in some Notre Dame ministries. Although they do not have individual wealth or income, sisters are at times perceived from the outside as “expensive” because they charge fees for medical treatment and pharmaceuticals. Some local people mistakenly assume Sisters of Notre Dame receive financial support directly from the Vatican rather than raising and sharing resources within the structure of their own order. The tension between providing health care and education while also collecting money for health services and teachers’ salaries is an ongoing struggle for sisters who work in hospitals and village schools. Many patients come to Notre Dame health centers and dispensaries believing they should receive medical care at no personal cost. It is difficult for sisters to make patients understand that the medications they receive must be purchased or that the congregation does not have limitless resources. Sisters who oversee schools in rural areas find themselves mediating between the government and parents who cannot afford school fees, trying to develop alternative ways of financing their children’s educations. At the same time, they question government failures that have placed them in this ambiguous position. A few days after I arrived in Kinshasa, Sr. Mamy took me on a tour of the Kimwenza Health Center René de Haes, which is just adjacent to the postulant house. As we walked the grounds of the health center, she told the story of a local pastor who asked the Sisters of Notre Dame to consider beginning a ministry in Kimwenza, where the provincial, novice, and postulate houses are located. Surrounded by several other women’s religious institutes, there were already plenty of good schools in the area, so he advised them to find a different ministry that would enable them to serve the population of Kimwenza. A nearby dispensary had recently been destroyed by erosion, and several sisters in the province suggested constructing a health center.17 Working in partnership with the Fathers of St.  Paul and Fonds social de la République (Social Funds of the Repub-

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lic), ground was broken in 2007. After the initial five-wing building was constructed, the province sought additional funding to expand the project. The congregation provided $750,000 through the international mission office, and two American donors contributed a matching $750,000. After sixteen months of work, the Health Center René de Haes opened in October 2009, dedicated to the memory of a Jesuit priest who was murdered in Kimwenza in 2005. Sr. Mamy led me through the different wards of the health center and the small rooms containing rows of beds. We stopped to visit Sr. Odette’s father, who was staying there. Lying on his back in a curtained-off corner of the room, one of his legs was sticking out from under a thin sheet, and Sr. Mamy commented he must be doing better because he was wearing trousers. Although the man was not very responsive, we both clasped his hand before greeting his wife, dressed radiantly in a vivid green dress with her hair carefully plaited in braids. After visiting Sr.  Odette’s father, Sr.  Mamy showed me the small maternity ward, where a young woman was sitting in a loose robe holding a newborn baby, only a few days old. Sr. Mamy explained that the mother was using a bottle because she was not producing breastmilk. Speaking briefly in Kikongo, Sr. Mamy touched the baby’s head gently before we left. Later that month, when I sat down with Sr.  Odette to talk about her experiences working as a nurse in Kitenda, she told me her father was still ill and had been transferred to a hospital in Kinshasa. Adjusting the darkgreen-and-red shawl wrapped around her broad shoulders to keep away the chill of the dry season, Sr.  Odette reclined back on the couch where we sat in the community room. She placed her hand in her lap as she described the challenges of working in health care. “The objectives of my work?” she asked aloud. “It is to answer the needs of the poor, to answer the needs of the sick, and also especially women and children. . . . There are a lot of difficulties: there are difficulties of understanding, financial difficulties, understandings of the people. It depends on the milieu. . . . There are also the problems of adaptation. Sometimes there are milieus where you adapt with great difficulty, but one adapts oneself. We’re missionaries.” When I asked for an example of these difficulties of understanding, Sr. Odette clarified, “For example, one pays for health care. The sisters must be paid, but given the difficulties of the people, when you ask them to pay for their care, they say, ‘You are sisters, you should not ask us for money.’ Now it’s with the money that you can pay for medications and other things that the people need. . . . [But] you cannot leave someone like that to die.

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You give the care, and when you give them that care, after some time, they are going to flee, to leave. They don’t even pay you.” Although Sr. Odette works with members of the local community to increase awareness that the sisters cannot provide medical treatment without cost, her efforts have produced mixed results. “Sometimes they understand,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t, because for them, they say that the sisters have money.” When I talked with Sr. Yvette, a thirty-eight-year-old lab technician, late one evening after finishing a long day of work at the Kimwenza dispensary, she expressed the same frustration. A petite woman with a heart-shaped face, Sr.  Yvette became animated as she described her experiences at the health center. “It’s a very poor milieu; we are on the outskirts of the town,” she explained. “We are in a part of [the] country where the population is poor. The population is poor, so we are there especially for the poor. When the sick arrive there, it’s often an emergency.” According to Sr. Yvette, there are people who come for treatment in the hospital and then refuse to contribute anything to the expense of their treatment. Although the priority is always to help them first and discuss the issue of payment later, some patients insult them, saying the sisters only want money. Sr. Yvette spoke quickly and with visible distress as she described the attitudes she encounters: “There are things that people cry out to us, especially in town. ‘Oh, the sisters, the sisters are expensive!’ Yes, that is upsetting. Personally, that upsets me because what we do is less expensive [than other health centers]. It’s only the people who come from other places who discover that we are less expensive in relation [to other places]. . . . There are times when I get angry. There are times when I keep quiet. I look; I laugh.” Other sisters I talked with expressed similar concerns regarding how to fund health services for people who cannot afford to pay for them. Sr. Clémence, a nurse, summarized the problem: “We work with a very poor population; and despite the goodwill, we are unable to reach our objectives. To provide adequate care or the most appropriate [care], it costs too much money. Pharmaceuticals as well as employees are another expense, and they are expensive, but the population is very poor and cannot afford adequate care. On one side, you want to save lives, and on the other, there is the problem of finance. You can give pharmaceuticals for free, but yet again, you have to look after the money to replace [them].” Sisters who work in health care agree that there is no easy solution to these problems but explain that little by little, they are trying to change local mentalities and raise awareness about the constraints of providing services with the resources they have.

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Collecting School Fees Sisters of Notre Dame who are teachers in the Congo-Kinshasa Province encounter a different set of obstacles related to the privatization of the education system, which relies on parents to finance their children’s schooling. Charged with the management of convention schools that are in theory funded by the state, sisters expressed ambivalence and frustration regarding their responsibility to collect school fees in cities isolated by poor transportation or by their rural locales in the interior of the country. As intermediaries between families and the government, sisters have developed creative strategies that help families who cannot afford their children’s educations but also leave the problematic system in place. I talked with Sr. Louise in the front room of the provincial house shortly after she returned from a thirty-day silent retreat. Sr. Louise grew up in Kinshasa, a city of more than 9 million people. Now as principal of a Notre Dame elementary school in the distant southwest village of Kinsáku, she lives with only one other sister. Showing me a photograph of the school, which has an enrollment of 175, Sr. Louise described life in the village: “Where we are, there are really millions of abandoned poor people. . . . Where we are is a village, so the children come from [other] distant villages. They sometimes walk for two hours, so [because of] the difficulties of their route, when they arrive, they are already tired.” In this setting, Sr. Louise has adapted school policies to meet the particular needs of her students and their families. Although a typical elementary school day would begin at 7:30 a.m., Sr. Louise begins classes at 8:00 a.m. to give students time to rest after their long walk from home. More challenging still, many families in the region cannot afford to educate their children. Sr. Louise works closely with these families and instead of asking for money parents do not have, the province accepts produce they harvest as a form of tuition. Sr. Louise clarified the process for me. Although Notre Dame schools receive funds from the government, it is not enough to pay teachers, so as soon as the government publishes the specific sum administrators should ask for from children for school fees at the beginning of the year, she calculates the value in amounts of fufu or beans: They cannot pay like others who normally pay the costs, like here in Kinshasa. So . . . at the beginning of the year, before the start of school, I have a meeting with the parents. . . . I ask them to bring me something from their field. For example, if it’s the season for beans, they can bring beans because

Poverty, Development, and the Challenges of Catholic Sisterhood in the DRC / 183 they don’t have money.  .  .  . I send the beans to Kimwenza so that sisters can buy them for the community. And that money, that’s what I give to the teachers [who are not sisters]. So the difficulties—that’s it, because there, they don’t have the [chance] to have money. Since they don’t have money, they pay in kind, so they give either fufu or beans.

Later in our conversation, Sr. Louise directly addressed her dissatisfaction with the government and the circumstances that make these strategies necessary: “I want to speak a little about the work with the population . . . on the level of the government.” She continued, Normally, the government should take care of the teachers. The parents should not have to pay the costs. The government gives something, but it is not sufficient, so the parents are obliged to pay the teachers. That is the injustice if I can say so, because the people who work in the government have a lot of money. And our country has natural resources. It’s not poor. But bad management—they do not know how to manage the public good. They take it for themselves. The country has diamonds. There is gold, raw material. There is everything. But the population does not benefit from all of that.

Sr.  Louise went on to lament the widespread corruption, which ensures only people working for the government benefit from the nation’s wealth. Sr.  Louise’s experiences illustrate how sisters creatively and resourcefully navigate vast inequalities in the public sector to accomplish the mission of the congregation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They also highlight how formal church-state partnerships may translate into forms of local governance that place sisters in untenable institutional positions on the ground.

Addressing Gender Inequalities In some settings, Congolese sisters’ lifestyles and relative communal wealth may pose obstacles to working with local people. At other times, religious sisterhood offers Congolese women a unique set of institutional resources to more effectively advocate for social change. As argued in chapter 4, sisters’ social ministries enable them to affirm their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others. They also provide opportunities for sisters to resist regional gender regimes around girls’ education, women’s professional trajectories, and female landownership. Whereas it is rare to find women in

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formal leadership positions in many of the villages where they work, sisters take on the full administration of their own institutions, including schools, dispensaries, and women’s development centers.18 Sisters own and manage the land surrounding their convents, including 60 hectares of farmland. This is unusual in light of local obstacles to women’s landownership. Despite a legal framework for women’s land rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo, most land is still traded through traditional practices that do not allow women direct access to land rights outside of marriage.19 According to the customary land system, women cannot independently access, inherit, or buy land, and women in rural areas are disadvantaged by a lack of knowledge regarding formal legal processes. In addition to providing a visible example of women’s leadership and land ownership, sisters are beginning to enter male-dominated occupations and professions. Although most remain in gender-traditional fields as teachers and nurses, the province now includes theologians, linguists, veterinarians, and agricultural engineers, as well as an electrician, lawyer, information technologist, psychologist, anthropologist, medical doctor, laboratory technician, and auto mechanic.20 This is significant in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where women are underrepresented in most sectors of the formal economy and female workers are much less likely than male workers to be in wage employment.21 Women remain concentrated in the informal and traditional agricultural sectors. Those who live in rural areas have limited access to health care or education, which is reflected in the significantly higher illiteracy rates among women: 40 percent nationally compared to 15 percent among men.22 Responding to the structural inequalities between women and men that persist in almost every aspect of social, economic, and political life, Sisters of Notre Dame have opened centers for displaced girls and single mothers in Nséélo, Kiséénso, and Brazzaville. Reflecting on the mission of these centers, sisters argue that they must gather women who did not study well and give them training that will enable them to adapt to the demands of everyday life and become independent. At the women’s center in Nséélo, sisters teach young women and girls, including many single mothers who never had the chance to either begin or complete their studies. Similarly, at the center in Kiséénso, sisters work with unemployed girls, offering courses in sewing, reading, writing, life skills, cooking, family and domestic education, and religion. The diversification of sisters’ ministries in recent years is a point of pride for many members. Sr.  Simone, age forty-eight, manages the province’s farmland, overseeing the sowing and harvesting of cassava, beans, pota-

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toes, sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, watermelon, chili peppers, mangos, avocados, and dates. Drawing on her own experiences and examples of members working as mechanics, engineers, and electricians, Simone argued that sisters demonstrate to other women that they too are capable of working in professions still dominated by men: “When we work, there are times where they tell us that, ‘This work is reserved [for men]. It’s not for women. Women cannot perform this ministry, this work.’ . . . But now, for the moment, there are women who do the same jobs as men. . . . Women are capable of doing any work, no exceptions.” While many sisters shared Simone’s belief that women are capable of doing any work without exception, most still view education as their primary vehicle for addressing gender inequality. As members of an organization dedicated to teaching girls and women, sisters believe they can empower others in their roles as teachers and principals. When explaining the concrete steps they are taking to improve the situation of women in the country, sisters often focused on removing obstacles to girls’ education and raising awareness among families about the importance of educating their daughters, especially in rural areas where parents prioritize the education of sons. Sr.  Jacqueline describes herself as a teacher by nature and specializes in pedagogy. Although Sr.  Jacqueline encourages the young women she teaches to prioritize academics, her own biography helped her recognize that girls’ struggles to access education begin before they reach the classroom. Growing up in a family of seven girls, Jacqueline’s father showed little concern for the schooling of his daughters when they were young, and it was her mother who made sure all the children took education seriously. Years later, her father apologized to his daughters for his neglect. Sitting in the parlor of the Lemfu convent, Sr. Jacqueline told me, “I like education. I like to teach. I like to make parents aware.” She continued, “In our family, we are seven. Seven girls. No boys, only girls. So when we were still children, our father had money, but as girls, he respected us less. He thought we wouldn’t study, he neglected [us] a little. But our mother did everything and we studied. My sisters studied too. I have sisters who are teachers. I have sisters who did technical studies. Finally, Papa was sorry. ‘Oh, that was a mistake.’ He was sorry. He asked forgiveness.” Now as a principal and teacher in Lemfu, this experience informs Sr.  Jacqueline’s consciousnessraising work among parents: I give advice; I make the parents aware. For example, here the parents like to pay for the boys. They sometimes neglect the girls. I like to raise awareness.

186 / Chapter Seven I like to give advice to parents who have daughters [and] who like to neglect their daughters. I tell them, “You must pay for the girls too, because the girls also have their work.” The girls also help their parents, and the girls are useful in society. We have women ministers. We have doctors—why don’t you want to pay for the girls? I like to raise the parents’ awareness.

By helping parents recognize their daughters’ potential and framing schooling as an investment in their future, Sr. Jacqueline hopes to change local attitudes regarding the value of girls’ education. Sr.  Aurélie, a thirty-seven-year-old principal at Lycée Sala-salakia, sees one of the most important aspects of her work in the classroom as helping girls realize they are equal to their male peers. Although she believes the conditions for Congolese women have improved, Sr.  Aurélie sometimes encounters the “old mentality” in Kitenda, which is located about nine hundred kilometers from Kinshasa and surrounded by dense forest and mountains.23 Sitting in the community room of the provincial house, she explained, In our society  .  .  . we gave priority to boys. [In] many things [like] studying . . . the woman was considered only as the mother of the family, and so as the mother of the family, she wasn’t given many opportunities to evolve. They left her at that level, at the lowest level. They left women without education. When a woman did something good, this was not considered by society. But now . . . everyone has understood that all children need to be equal  .  .  . And now, many women study. Many have jobs, and they do all that the men do. But where I work, for example, there are parents who keep the old spirit. Therefore, a man is worth more than a woman. And so there are some who leave their children, the girls, in the villages instead of sending them to school. . . . That is still the case in certain families today. These are the problems that we run into in our apostolic environment. . . . But we are fighting now so that parents understand that girls and boys, they should have the same opportunities. We form the children, and we give a lot of conferences on the equality of men and women.

Sr.  Aurélie had the opportunity to directly address gender inequalities among her students when Lycée Sala-salakia, originally founded as a school for girls, became coeducational: “The girls thought that the boys were more intelligent than they. But little by little, we help the students to understand that they are all equal. [Now] they say, ‘I can work better than a man. I can do much more than a man. And I can harvest more than

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a man. I can produce.’ . . . They are beginning to understand that . . . we are all the same. We have competencies and qualities. So if they think of themselves that way, they can advance even more than men.” As Sr. Aurélie thinks about the future, she hopes girls and young women “have the vision to look ahead, to look a little further and to learn to work together . . . to be a force.” She told me, “If they work together, they can do something good and even bring about wonderful things.” Through both the traditionally gendered work of educating youth and their limited entry into nontraditional fields for women, sisters focus on how they can leverage leadership positions to challenge local patriarchal constraints. Across ministry settings, members see themselves as empowered to be advocates for greater gender equality who are “help[ing] women defend themselves” and “fighting for the emancipation of women.” As Sr.  Élodie observed, “In our cultural values, there are many things which oppress, especially women. Women must submit. The woman cannot do this. There are many interdictions against women. Here, we try, within the realm of the possible, to help women a little to get out of [it].”

The Limitations of Religious Sisterhood in Public Life As Sr. Louise argued when addressing the issue of school fees, many of the problems Sisters of Notre Dame encounter in the Democratic Republic of Congo are related to the poor “management of public goods.” Sisters often spoke of government corruption and the unequal distribution of the country’s natural resources, which are rarely invested into programs that benefit the wider population. Working within the limitations of the Congolese state to provide health care and education—and to make sense of how their multifaceted social identities are perceived in local communities— Congolese sisters have proven resourceful in navigating these challenging political and cultural landscapes. Although Congolese sisters embraced roles as educators and community leaders who work to further gender equality and effect social change at the local level, there were times when they found these positions limiting in the face of government corruption and state violence. In 2012, Sisters of Notre Dame expressed frustration regarding their inability to take a more public stand against government corruption and electoral fraud during the 2011 presidential election. Over the past decade, the Catholic Church has played a prominent role in national politics, criticizing the intransient administration of President Joseph Kabila, who was in power for eighteen years following the assassination of his father in 2001. During the 2011

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presidential elections, the church deployed thirty thousand election observers across the country and joined international organizations in questioning the credibility of vote counting.24 Although Catholic bishops and priests were at the forefront of efforts to challenge the political status quo, sisters remained less visible. Pointing to widespread social unrest and violence across the country, sisters argued that direct political engagement was too dangerous and turned to local bishops to voice their concerns in the public square. “To talk loudly about injustice, it would be good,” Sr. Mamy explained. “But we fear because with our government, if just today we talk, tomorrow you will find yourself in the cemetery. . . . You want to say the truth, but political people do not want that. They are killing many people like that about truth. You say truth, you are gone.” Sisters’ reluctance to speak publicly about social inequality was motivated by justified fears of political and gender-based violence against local leaders and activists, which is well documented across the region.25 Compounding these concerns, members believed that their visibility as religious sisters would jeopardize not only personal safety but also the safety of other Sisters of Notre Dame in the country. This apprehension kept sisters from adopting public positions that might have enabled them to work on a broader scale for the social changes they envisioned. Shaking her head wearily at the state of politics in Congo, Sr. Colette explained how the actions of one sister could have consequences for the entire organization: “Politics is a touchy subject. It is something dangerous to the church to say something, but I mean especially [to] the congregation, because if you say something, the provincial will be arrested. Each Sister of Notre Dame will be going to the town, will be killed, will disappear.” Concern for how one sister’s political engagement would affect the wellbeing of others contributed to a sense of powerlessness among regional leaders of the order. Sr. Élodie spoke passionately about the frustration and paralysis she felt in the face of such obstacles: I do not have the power to go and denounce the government . . . that what you are doing is unjust. So that is my limit. That makes me seethe with anger. For example, if today I speak on the radio to the people, I will be pursued. . . . It is I who am doing that [speaking], but it is the whole province that will be put in danger because of me. . . . Sometimes we [superiors] speak, but it’s difficult for the women because [of] all that follows for women. They are raped, mistreated. A certain fear keeps us from denouncing evil, injustices. Sometimes I do not really feel like a Sister of Notre Dame because I do not have the courage to speak. . . . If they kill just me, that is OK, but afterwards,

Poverty, Development, and the Challenges of Catholic Sisterhood in the DRC / 189 they are going to look in the congregation, make the other sisters suffer, all that. Sometimes one is afraid.

Even sisters who believe they have a responsibility to criticize the government regardless of personal safety, like Sr.  Élodie, concluded it would be reckless to endanger the entire community. Pulled between the conviction that they should speak publicly about injustice and fear of the broader consequences, other sisters turned to male church leaders to voice their concerns in the public square. Sr.  Violette, age twenty-two, compared her own powerlessness to the authority of male church leaders: “There are certain injustices that we experience, and I have to denounce them, [but] if I denounce them, there is a severe consequence waiting for me. . . . When the cardinal speaks, I know I should talk, but if I stand up, they will come and pillage the convent. We will not be in safety anymore. But the cardinal, who is the head of the church in Congo, has spoken without necessarily being scared.” Drawing comparisons between the cardinal, bishops, and local chiefs who speak for their people, younger sisters like Violette were less likely to question the terms of this patriarchal bargain, accepting male church leaders as legitimate representatives of their concerns.26 More senior sisters like Élodie and Colette—who participate in national leadership conferences of women religious, travel internationally, and work with members in the West—expressed deeper ambivalence regarding their own lack of political voice. Familiar with the example of sisters in other parts of the world taking public stances on political issues, they were torn between fear of local repercussions and knowledge of the risks that other women religious take.27 Faced with the limitations of religious sisterhood in the public square, members across generations turned back to their traditional roles as educators. They argued that although “the sister cannot really get involved directly,” she shapes the nation in other ways by raising awareness about national issues among younger members of the congregation, providing a good example for other citizens to follow, and educating members of small Christian communities about their rights. In the words of Sr. Maryse, “We have to be witnesses, counselors, examples, models. We cannot meddle in the current life which politics is leading.” Critical of social norms that undermine women’s educational and professional attainment in the villages where they work, sisters stopped short of questioning women’s exclusion from leadership of the Catholic Church. Like their counterparts around the world, Congolese sisters are barred from the all-male hierarchy of priests. Although some questioned why sisters are not allowed to perform the religious sacraments of Eucharist, penance,

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anointing of the sick, or matrimony when priests are absent or unavailable, few explicitly challenged women’s exclusion from church leadership. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Catholic women’s exclusion from church hierarchy is compounded by their underrepresentation in other formal institutions.28 Membership in a religious order does not necessarily discourage political action among Congolese sisters, but it may promote tacit acceptance of patriarchal leadership structures, both religious and secular. Instead of engaging directly or taking public stances on national issues themselves, sisters utilize the resources available to them within the structure of the Catholic Church, relying on priests, bishops, and the cardinal to point out corruption and contest election results.

Conclusions The ministries of Sisters of Notre Dame in the Lower Congo represent only a small fraction of the development work Catholic religious orders are engaged in throughout the country. Nevertheless, these sisters’ experiences offer a window into the struggles of African sisters who are on the front lines of development across the continent. At the organizational level, the ability of sisters to provide education and health care is shaped by the status of the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its close, but at times conflicted, relationship to the national government. In sisters’ everyday lives, regional perceptions of sisters’ religious vows and lifestyles are just as salient as they work to accomplish the mission of the order. In ministry settings, tensions between the local and transnational aspects of sisters’ identities surface in community-level critiques and misunderstandings regarding how Western resources flow through religious orders into public services that must be acquired through a fee. At a personal level, these conflicts are evident in the sisters’ inability to honor kinship obligations by providing material aid to family members. As Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur talk about the goals of their work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they are undoubtedly influenced by the Western vocabularies of international development in which notions of self-reliance and women’s empowerment hold important weight, operating as a powerful form of discursive currency. Sisters of Notre Dame often combine this transnational paradigm of sustainable development with local notions of hierarchical care, positioning themselves as models for the rest of the population, helping young women and “the poor” develop the skills they need to become independent, contributing members of society. This fluid vernacularization of sustainable development is simi-

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lar to the vernacularization of other transnationally circulating discourses regarding human rights and women’s rights observed by scholars.29 Social actors may vernacularize globally circulating ideas and practices in order to achieve greater resonance, support, and external funding or to identify their efforts with perceptions of modernity, progress, and other influential global initiatives.30 While, in some ways, Sisters of Notre Dame appear to be more closely aligned with the approach of international development groups than the Ugandan sisters of Scherz’s study, this case reveals distinct internal logics of service provision and development work that are influenced by specific cultural and political geographies. Outside the institutional church, Catholic sisters across Africa are receiving growing attention, praise, and financial support for their involvement in ministries that fit the expansive definition of sustainable development outlined by the United Nations in 2015. When the vice president of grant programs for the Hilton Foundation addressed the 2016 convening of “Catholic Sisters: Champions of Sustainable Development in Africa,” he told participants in Nairobi, “Sisters sometimes go places where even the government cannot go. You work with the poor and poorest and do thankless and invisible work to which you are called by God. This boldness by sisters especially from Africa continues to inspire us.”31 Indeed, Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame are among those women ministering in regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo that their government has failed to reach. While these efforts deserve recognition, this sustainable development framework risks obscuring the injustices Catholic sisters face within national politics and the church hierarchy as they do this work. Often caught as intermediaries between the population and the “two major poles of power [church and state] which determine—through negotiation—large domains of service delivery,” sisters’ leadership and autonomy is undermined by political violence as well as widespread deference to the male leadership of priests and bishops.32

Conclusion Circling Back and Looking Forward

“Have you heard the news?” Sr.  Lana asked with interest after we met in front of the community college where she teaches in eastern Massachusetts. Thankful that I had read yesterday’s headlines before leaving the house that morning, I knew immediately that she was referring to a scathing assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Resulting from the apostolic visitation of US Catholic women’s religious orders that began in 2008, the sudden release of the statement on April 18, 2012, caught everyone by surprise, including US sisters, who received no prior communication or warning from the Vatican.1 The report criticized LCWR, which has 1,500 members and represents 80 percent of US sisters, for placing too much focus on poverty and economic injustice while staying “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage. It also reprimanded sisters for promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” and making public statements that disagree or challenge the bishops, referencing the statement of support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed by many sisters despite the opposition of American bishops.2 As I followed Sr. Lana—dressed sharply in a yellow turtleneck sweater, pressed brown slacks, and patent leather shoes—we discussed these recent developments. Waiting for the elevator, she told me that one of the librarians who is very supportive of sisters was the first to tell her when the news from the Vatican broke. On the second floor, Sr.  Lana led me through a quiet section of the library to the circulation desk, where she introduced me to the same librarian, who was printing out articles about the Vatican statement. We paused for a minute to talk, and the librarian pointed out headlines in the Independent, “Vatican Censures ‘Feminist’ Nuns for Supporting U.S. Healthcare Reform.” Imparting a sense of just how deeply reli-

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gious sisterhood has changed in her lifetime, Sr.  Lana, now seventy-two, told us the story of visiting Brandeis University with a group of sisters while she was studying at Emmanuel College. Entering in 1958, Lana belonged to one of the first batches that pursued bachelor’s degrees as a group. They were still wearing the habit at the time, and as they sat in the library, she remembers other students approaching them as if they were walking toward an image rather than real people. When students asked them what it was like to wear a habit, they responded as they had been trained: “The sky is blue.”

In the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the diversity of women’s views and experiences within a transnational religious order was nowhere more evident than in sisters’ relationships to the institutional church. As illustrated in the previous chapter, Congolese sisters perceptions and understandings of the hierarchy were dramatically different than those of US sisters, as they turned to bishops to represent their viewpoints in the public square and expressed overwhelming support for church leaders who are trying to challenge national politics at great personal risk. Conversely, across the United States, sisters participate in public life through personal actions, individual congregations, and collective efforts among women religious to articulate formal positions on justice issues and to educate constituents about local, national, and global concerns. They are also prepared to take positions that differ from those of male leaders of the church.

US Sisters: It’s like Trying to Put Toothpaste Back in the Tube At various points during my fieldwork in Greater Boston, I observed the disillusioning aftermath of the Vatican’s 2008 apostolic visitation. Sometimes it was in direct conversations, like the one with Sr. Lana in the opening story. Most often, tensions were reflected in the uneasy relationship between sisters and American bishops. A few sisters asked me to turn off my digital recorder during interviews or said, “Don’t put this in your book!” in a light, offhand way when they talked about conflict with the church. Others talked about their frustrations openly. In these conversations, sisters drew sharp distinctions between the church they are trying to build, an inclusive church of the people, and the one they see the hierarchy supporting, an exclusive church that selectively prioritizes particular doctrinal issues. The widening chasm between women’s religious orders and the US hierarchy was most palpable when sisters reflected on the role of the church

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in public life. Many argued that the church is at its best when it draws on its Catholic social teachings, speaking out about immigration, poverty, and social inequality instead of gender, human sexuality, or family life. Others expressed the concern that while the church has some amazingly good documents on social justice, leaders had “picked the wrong issue” and were speaking on topics they did not fully understand, leading to declining public influence and respect. Sr. Eileen, a seventy-two-year-old teacher, talked about how the church has become too selectively focused on abortion and worried that “when the church puts energy into the wrong things, it makes the church less credible.” Sr. Betty, age sixty-nine, reflected carefully, “Sometimes they [the hierarchy] step into politics when they shouldn’t be there, and there’s other times when they should step in and they don’t.” She went on to give the example of US bishops speaking out about family life: “They don’t understand family life, but yet they’re talking about it, and they don’t understand it.” Similarly, Sr. Bridget, age seventy-one, remarked, “I’d like them to refrain from the sexual issues, giving their opinion as unmarried men on how married people should behave and control the size of their families.” Overwhelmingly, Sisters of Notre Dame argued that US bishops are ill suited to provide guidance on the issues about which they have become most vocal in recent decades—family life, reproductive issues, and human sexuality. Similar to other groups of Catholic sisters across the United States, Sisters of Notre Dame believe their way of life—standing outside the hierarchical structure of the church as neither clergy nor laity—can be a challenge to the broader institution.3 Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the United States are no strangers to the controversy that can erupt from taking a controversial public stance. In 1984, two Sisters of Notre Dame joined twenty-six other sisters along with one hundred Catholic scholars, social activists, and a handful of priests in signing a full-page advertisement in the New York Times asserting a “diversity of opinion on abortion” and calling for “candid and respectful discussion on this diversity of opinion within the Church.”4 The Vatican took swift disciplinary action against those who participated, and a two-year controversy ensued. Although the leadership of the Sisters of Notre Dame did ask the sisters in question to cooperate with the Vatican, they refused to ask them to leave the congregation despite pressure from Rome. When Sr. Kate, age seventy-eight, shared her memories of this time, she emphasized the need for sisters to defend who they are and “really live what [they]’re called to do,” even when facing external pressure from Rome. A petite woman, she spoke firmly: “When we feel that there is something wrong, that the church is trying to rein us in,

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[I would like to see us always be] willing to speak up in defense of who we are and what we stand for without fear.” As they challenged the direction, priorities, and reactionary stances of the hierarchy, Sisters of Notre Dame expressed the desire to open and “redefine church,” to make it “a church of inclusion rather than exclusion,” where “nobody should feel inferior to anybody else.” Sr.  Jo chose her words slowly and carefully as she reflected on a recent campaign by the Archdiocese of Boston to increase mass attendance and questioned the future of the church: I wish there was a way that the church was more relevant to the lives of the people. I find that the church is not willing to change, to adapt to the times. I was at a meeting with the cardinal when they were getting this whole “Coming Home” program off the ground [during Lent], and all they were doing to welcome people back and to call people back home. Yet they had never really asked the questions or attended to the issues about why people left. So the question then remains: What are you coming home to? The same old, same old? I think until the church does some of that [introspection] . . . they’re going to continue to lose more and more. I mean, I think the statistics of this archdiocese is that only 16 percent of practicing Catholics go to church on Sunday. So the influence that the church always had is no longer there. . . . I’m not sure where it’s all going to end up.

As Sr. Jo alluded to, recent trends within US Catholicism are not promising. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, Catholicism has experienced a greater net loss due to religious switching than any other religious tradition in the US, with more than six former Catholics for every new convert.5 Many Catholics want to see substantial reforms in the church, and more than half support changes in key teachings on the use of birth control, the celibate male priesthood, divorce, and cohabitation.6 Some dissatisfied American Catholics simply “defect in place,” participating on their own terms in a tradition that espouses doctrines with which they disagree, while others join groups aimed at reforming the church itself.7 Sr.  Genie offered a vivid metaphor for the position in which many American sisters now find themselves. Expressing some of her frustration with recent attitudes she encounters in the institutional church, Sr. Genie shared, “I find them censoring us mostly, or quieting us down, or wanting us to go back into the convent and pull back. But once you’re with the people, you can’t pull back. You just can’t. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. It’s not going to happen. It just isn’t going to hap-

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pen, you know. We’re out, and we’re going to stay there.” While the process of stepping out of religious habits and larger convents into new lifestyles and ministries was fraught with conflict in the decade following Vatican II, Catholic sisters in the United States are now firmly rooted in the development of contemporary identities and practices. Religious orders like the Sisters of Notre Dame have no intention of rolling back renewals and returning to older models of religious life, even if this puts them at odds with the hierarchy. The institutional church no longer provides the primary source of identity and mission for many US sisters. While most Sisters of Notre Dame in the Boston and Ipswich provinces expressed confidence in the ways women’s religious life has evolved, there was less agreement regarding how to address questions of declining membership in the West. Some older members believe their future lies in imparting the Notre Dame charism through existing institutions and affiliate lay groups, but others were skeptical that the mission of the order could be kept alive without vowed religious doing the work of the institute. I met one of these women a little over a month after I returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Wearing a pink-and-navy-blue tracksuit with athletic sandals and pearl earrings, Sr. Annette was casual and direct as we ate breakfast together in an old-fashioned Cambridge diner early one morning in late September. “Don’t just tell us we are great,” she warned, focusing her intent blue eyes on me. “Yes, we are great, but . . . think critically about what is going on. . . . It’s like holding up a mirror to what sisters are telling you and then interpreting it but also reflecting it back to them. . . . ‘These are the words you are using, this is how you sound.’” Having recently returned from East Africa, Sr.  Annette described an exchange with a Congolese sister that was still haunting her. After a joint presentation on Notre Dame education in the United States, the young woman stood up and turned to the group of US sisters standing at the front of the room: “You said you have middle schools, high schools, and colleges in the US. Why are you not getting vocations?” The question, phrased simply and directly, floored the presenters. Even sisters who study these very issues intensely were caught off guard, stumbling for words and an appropriate response. Listening to Sr. Annette, I remembered an earlier conversation with Sr. Eileen who compared the efforts of US sisters to those in Belgium who have accepted their decline. She told me, “We haven’t given up yet!” Still, after spending time at the provincial house in Kimwenza among young Congolese sisters, I questioned whether the Boston or Ipswich provinces were welcoming places for young women in general or for

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the racially and ethnically diverse young women who appear more likely to enter religious life today. Currently, there is an entire division of a multimillion-dollar foundation exploring how to increase membership in women’s religious orders in the United States. Although the Conrad N. Hilton Sisters Initiative has attempted to remove barriers to women entering congregations, such as school debt and lack of knowledge of Catholic sisters, the gains have been modest.8 A recent report by the Center for Religion and Civic Culture asks whether the overall goal of increasing membership over the long run is even possible, regardless of the recent resources being directed toward it.9 Many of the factors contributing to declining membership in religious orders, such as religious disaffiliation and fewer practicing Catholics, are outside the purview of women’s religious institutes. From demographic and economic shifts among US Catholic families to the many opportunities young women have for education, work, social service, and intentional community outside religious orders today, there are broader structural shifts at work. Beyond these developments, there are two other substantial obstacles that deserve further attention: the patriarchal nature of the Catholic hierarchy and the struggle to balance individual and community life among US sisters. The institutional church’s troubled and at times oppositional relationship to women remains a barrier to interest in religious vocations. There are few leadership positions for women within the Catholic Church, and the high-profile apostolic visitation and Vatican reprimand of LCWR between 2008 and 2012 was perceived negatively by most laypeople. While the 2013 election of the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope from South America, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, brought tremendous enthusiasm and hope to Catholics throughout the world, the handling of the sex abuse scandal continues to rock the global church. When Pope Francis brought the apostolic visitation to an end, he offered great praise for sisters and signaled a closer alignment among the Vatican, the work sisters are doing, and those committed to Catholic social teachings.10 His final report expressed gratitude for the life’s work of women religious and called for dialogue with bishops and clergy, consideration of women in decision-making roles in the church, and an update to Mutuae Relationes (Mutual Relations) regarding collaboration among bishops and religious.11 However, it remains to be seen whether these recommendations will be put into practice or if members of the hierarchy are willing to engage women in real dialogue about issues that affect their lives. One initial

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motivation for the Vatican apostolic visitation was to examine the question of declining membership, but dioceses across the country continue to devote the most attention and resources to male vocations, prioritizing the sacramental role of the priesthood. Creating more leadership opportunities for sisters and clarifying their roles as vowed laywomen would be a critical first step in affirming the place of women religious in the institutional church. Whether the church will become more responsive to women is beyond the influence of most Catholic sisters, and women’s religious institutes that are interested in new membership would be wise to consider what community life will look like for women who enter. Many US Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur recommended I read the work of theologian Sr. Sandra Schneiders, IHM, and I was struck by her observation that “religious life is not merely a collection of individuals who engage in a variety of good works, but a distinctive state of life in the Church.”12 Talking with Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Greater Boston, I gained a rich sense of sisters’ formation in the charism of St. Julie and their relationship to the history of the congregation. I developed an appreciation for the meaning they give to their religious vows and how they carry out the mission of the order in responding to needs and working collectively for social change. However, it was more difficult to understand the distinctive state of communal life within dispersed communities and residences across Greater Boston. This poses a particular problem when welcoming new members and determining how they will be fully integrated into the life of the community. One important development identified by the Hilton Catholic Sisters Initiative is that some religious congregations are moving their novitiates to the Global South.13 Because Western aspirants are so few and far between, congregations like the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur could consider developing an internationally based cross-province novitiate experience for women who enter in the Global North. A number of American sisters who had more recently worked with novices expressed concern regarding the development of appropriate models of religious formation for women who are entering at a later age, with more educational, professional, and life experience. Older sisters commented that the training they received as eighteen-year-old novices is not well suited for women who enter in midlife. In the words of Sr. Kate, “I think we still struggle with our formation today because we fall back on what we had. Women are entering with very different [experiences]. . . . They have a wonderful prayer life, but they’re not eighteen. The way my formation took place at eighteen has to be different than somebody that enters at forty-six.” Although Ameri-

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can sisters are collaborating across US provinces and with other communities when they receive aspirants, the few women entering the congregation across the nation means that these collaborative multisite programs remain very small. An international cross-province novitiate could be a compelling response to both the challenge of offering formation to the few women who do choose to enter in the West and the demands of a more global sisterhood. Women would have the opportunity to experience how the Notre Dame charism is lived out in other parts of the world and could benefit from formation and community life with more diverse groups of sisters. Rather than the missionary model of exchange between regions that historically meant sending sisters from the Global North to mission in the Global South, new members would be socialized into religious life with sisters in other parts of the world. From the beginning of their formation, women would have the opportunity to develop new cultural and language competencies. The Sisters of Notre Dame already have the well-established model of the Julie Renewal Program, which gives sisters the opportunity to visit the birthplace of the congregation in Cuvilly and the motherhouse in Namur as they prepare for their final vows. In the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the fruits of this program were evident across provinces as sisters who had made their final vows shared stories about women they had met from other parts of the world through their participation in this program. An international cross-province novitiate could prove to have similar wide-reaching benefits.

Transnational but Local, Mobile but Rooted In October of 2012, I spent ten days with the Belgium-South Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur at the motherhouse in Namur.14 My visit was a whirlwind of activity, with almost every day carefully planned by the province. By the end, I was losing my voice, relying on throat lozenges to prevent coughing fits in the middle of my conversations with sisters. During my visit, I stayed in the convent adjoining the recently opened Heritage Centre, spent hours browsing through materials in the archives, and talked to sisters in Namur as well as in Jumet and Dinant. On a gorgeous, sunny fall day, I had the opportunity to take a day trip across the French border to Cuvilly, St. Julie’s birthplace in the territorial province of Picardy. After being expelled from Amiens in 1809, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur returned to northern France in 1953, teaching in schools and serving in parishes in Noyon, Orvillers-Sorel, and the environs.15 In 1985,

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the congregation founded the Cuvilly convent on the same grounds where St. Julie’s family home and oratory (chapel) were located. When I visited, the small community of Belgian sisters living in Cuvilly was engaged in pastoral ministry with the St. Julie Billiart Parish, composed of twenty-five churches across the region. One evening, as I placed my silverware on the blue plastic tray being passed around our circular table at supper, an elderly Belgian sister sitting next to me caught my attention and nodded. “The rubric,” she said with a twinkle in her blue eyes. I smiled back as Sr. Marguerite clinked her glass with a piece of flatware and the groups of white-haired sisters sitting at seven roundtop tables in the dining room grew quiet for the closing prayer. During my first supper at the motherhouse in Namur, I had been amazed by how spotless all the plates were at the end of the meal. There was always bread at the dinner table, and I followed the lead of sisters around me, using pieces of bread to mop up any remaining bits of food or liquid from my plate before we began clearing the table, putting every item in its proper place. Each piece of flatware was placed carefully on the plastic trays: small spoons across the top, knives and forks together. Although I only spent a short time with the Belgium-South Province, I had previously come to appreciate the importance of learning such specific mealtime rituals and the order of convent activities. Spending time with American, Congolese, and eventually Belgian Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, I experienced the distinct regional rubrics of religious life within the common vows and charism of a transnational religious order. Never content to stay in one diocese, St. Julie had a vision that her sisters would travel around the world, but she could not have anticipated the truly global shape of her religious institute today or the different religious and communal practices that would develop in each location over time. As the organization has expanded to new places and adopted local forms, it has both embraced a greater transnational identity for itself and wrestled with the meaning of this diversity. Like the larger Roman Catholic Church’s struggle to reconcile the universal and the particular, the Sisters of Notre Dame struggle to balance their common spiritual mission with regional and national concerns on the ground. I spent countless hours asking American, Congolese, and Belgian sisters questions about their lives. It was during these conversations that I became familiar sisters’ personal biographies, how they first encountered the Sisters of Notre Dame, and the meaning they give religious life. As great storytellers, sisters in Greater Boston brought the post–Vatican II shifts in community, ministry, and mission alive for me. At times, I felt as if I was

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standing with them, pouring Kool-Aid in South Boston or walking into the basement of St.  Patrick’s in Lowell to teach English for speakers of other languages for the first time. In Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu, sisters imparted a vivid sense of how much they sacrificed in the eyes of their family and community members. Taking vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience meant renouncing their most sacred kinship obligations to bring forth new life, repair the clan, and contribute resources to one’s family. Sisters sometimes found themselves in distant rural areas, teaching in villages where they would have never considered living if they were not asked to by a superior. During my fieldwork, I gained insight into how differently American and Congolese sisters conceive of their places within their communities, provinces, and the larger institutional church while witnessing how fully they embrace the life of St. Julie as a model, ancestor, and coconspirator across historical and continental divides. Locating themselves within a religious “topography that crosses borders,” the mobile and transnational aspects of sisters’ identities free them from some of the local constraints that bear down on other American and Congolese women.16 Still, the particular form religious life takes across regions reflects the logics of the cultures in which they are embedded. Too locally rooted to be global cosmopolitans, Sisters of Notre Dame have formed collective identities that depend on their presence and engagement in both transnational and regional communities.

The Challenge of Building a Global (Catholic) Sisterhood On the last evening of the ten-day English and technology PACE program led by four American sisters in Kimwenza, I helped Sr.  Lisa coordinate a game night. I sensed she was nervous about how it would come together, so I tried to be a good assistant, meeting her directly after dinner and helping her set out chairs around the community room. She had two sets of handwritten matching cards for the game of English-language charades in case we needed to divide into smaller groups. As sisters began to wander into the room and take their seats, she explained in French and English how we would play the game, and then the two of us demonstrated. Drawing the “swimming” card I began to move my arms in long strokes and splashes as people guessed in English. After Sr. Lisa and I took our turns, we started to ask for volunteers. Sr.  Lucie raised her hand first and came to the front of the room. I wondered how the game would proceed, since the point was to use English, but it moved along quickly and Congolese sisters were eager to volunteer answers. Everyone seemed to be enjoying

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themselves so much that when we started to run out of cards, I wrote out a few extra everyday actions so that we could continue. A handful of talented performers stole the show with their amusing performances. Sr.  Élodie made slow, exaggerated pouring and bubbling movements as she enacted “boiling water.” Sr. Marie Francine bent forward, making wide circular stirring movements with an imaginary stick for “cooking fufu,” straining as if the circular ball of dough was exhausting her whole body. Sr. Lylie squatted low to the ground, filling an imaginary bucket and splashing her body rhythmically one side at a time as if “taking a shower” Congolese style. At the end of the game, Sr. Lisa led a song, “The Good God Is So Very Good,” and I sang along easily to the simple lyrics. In my field notes, I wrote, I felt strangely emotional as I stood there singing with them, . . . I looked around at all the happy faces of these wonderful women who live in community, and I thought it is really a beautiful life, . . . I felt a little self-conscious standing there in front of all of those sisters, singing their song with them, as the only one who was not a sister. I felt as if they might be watching me, or perhaps I was watching myself, surprised by the emotion I felt well up at the words “the good God is so very good, / the good God is so very good, / the good God is so very good, / we say, the good God is so very good.” Then in French, then in Kikongo, [It was] beautiful.

That night, as I joined the chorus, I thought about what a unique opportunity it was to be standing among these women, gathered together from two different countries and various regions. I felt as if I was witnessing the global sisterhood that philanthropic organizations like Hilton envision: Congolese and American women laughing over enactments of everyday life and singing together the words of a song they all knew in different languages. Looking back on the time I spent with American and Congolese sisters, these moments of mutuality represent the ideal of global Catholic sisterhood at its best, ripe with potential for greater understanding among diverse groups within the same organization. Some of the barriers seemed less apparent in the laughter, and the cultural and generational distances were less constraining. There were, however, other moments during the time I spent at the provincial house when the promise of global sisterhood seemed fraught with tension and ripe with misunderstanding. As I helped out with the technology classes for the PACE program, there were moments when the distances between the older US sisters who were teaching the

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class and their younger Congolese counterparts in the provincial house computer lab became evident and seemed unbridgeable. At times, US sisters spoke in patronizing tones, their patience stretched thin as they worked with Congolese sisters who have limited access to computers or internet in their communities. There were other moments when Congolese sisters chided their US peers sharply for lack of local knowledge and competence. Not surprisingly, the transnationality of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur is appreciated, experienced, and embraced differently among members. It often meant more to those who had greater personal opportunities to experience this transnationality through travel. Many sisters who spent little time outside their own province still expressed great pride at the global reach of the congregation. For American sisters, who face a declining number of members, this was especially important. Knowing that there are young sisters in other countries means “new life in the Southern Hemisphere,” even though few expect vocations in the Global South to reverse the overall decline in membership. The sense of belonging to something bigger than one’s self with a legacy that extends beyond the borders of the US is an important part of what it means to belong to an international religious order. When Sr. Jo reads Notre Dame newsletters, she catches bits and pieces of what sisters are doing in different places and is impressed by the scope of the order’s ministries. Even when she is not directly involved in the work, Sr. Jo takes pride in the fact that another sister is doing it. She feels connected to their efforts through her membership in the order. “Even though sister so-and-so in the Congo just opened up a hospital,” Sr. Jo reflected, “she was part of you, you know, so you were part of opening up that hospital.” When Sr. Lisa spoke about her experiences in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she shared a similar sentiment. “There are people living in situations in the world that cry out for you to do something,” she explained. “Sometimes what I mean by ‘you’ is the broader global community. Sometimes what I mean by ‘you’ is me, personally. I can’t go and do everything, but I’m a part of a community that can do many things.” While all the members I met were aware of the transnational structure and practices of the organization, some American and Congolese women articulated a deeper sense of transnational belonging and combined their actions with an awareness of those transnational aspects of their identities.17 For such women, the opportunity to spend time with sisters in other countries had not only enriched their lives but also transformed their religious vocations. When Sr. Eileen was preparing to take a sabbatical from teaching, she was rereading the constitutions and was struck by one part

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in particular: “There was a section on newer members—that newer members should have the opportunity to learn a second language, to work with the poor  .  .  . and to live in a culture other than their own. So I said  .  .  . ‘Even though I’m far from a new member, that would be something really good to do.’” With a background in French, Sr. Eileen volunteered to teach English in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent time traveling throughout the region with the provincial. Sr. Eileen kept a journal that she wrote in every day, and when she returned to the United States, she colorcoded her observations on culture, religion, and the province. Sr.  Eileen still draws on these ethnographic insights as she develops presentations for mission appeals and shares her experiences in her work as a teacher. Sr.  Maureen explained that for many years, it felt like she was going through the motions of religious life without a great sense of meaning. At times, she thought about leaving the congregation and questioned her religious vocation. Sr. Maureen told me it was the opportunity to live with Sisters of Notre Dame in the South African Province for two years while doing formation work that opened her eyes and “kind of woke [her] up.” She experienced a new sense of connectedness to other people and a greater sense of affirmation and belonging as a Sister of Notre Dame: Until then, Africa was very far away. Geographically, it’s far away, but it shifted something in my theology that made me feel like I was a citizen of the world and not just a citizen of the United States. I began to understand much more the connectedness that we all have as human beings and that what happens to one person over here can affect all of us. . . . I would say the time I spent in Africa was the most profound transformational experience in my life. . . . I mean, I entered [the sisterhood] at eighteen, not really knowing what I was choosing. . . . I would say through my twenties, and maybe even early thirties, I moved along, and I made final vows, and so on and so forth. I went to school, but I thought a lot about leaving the congregation. It was the experience in Africa for whatever reason that solidified that this is where I belong. So it also deepened a sense of “This is the right place for me. This is where I can live out who I am, with the gifts I have, and be happy—and hopefully of service.”  .  .  . It was a very significant personal experience  .  .  . [that] opened my eyes.

Although Sr. Élodie did not have doubts about her life within the Sisters of Notre Dame, her own international experiences left her with a fuller, more complete sense of sisterhood. In the late 1980s, after completing a

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master’s degree, Sr. Élodie was invited to give a talk on the spirituality of St. Julie at the motherhouse in Namur. Standing alone in front of Sisters of Notre Dame gathered from around the world, teaching them about the spirituality of St. Julie, gave her a deeper sense of her membership in the congregation. She explained, “I really felt that ‘I am a Sister of Notre Dame’.  .  .  . There were many people there and [many] Sisters of Notre Dame. The sisters encouraged me to do all that, so from that day [forward] I felt, ‘I am really a Sister of Notre Dame . . . fully a sister.’” For Congolese sisters, claiming sisterhood with members from other countries often means confronting the global hierarchies built into the very structure of the organization. Sr. Céline, age eighty, reflected, “We had to live the life of colonization . . . and then, religious life evolves. Contact with religious [in other parts] of the world improved [religious life] a lot.” At international gatherings, however, Congolese sisters still experience the material, economic, and racial/ethnic divides between regions. Their interactions with Belgian sisters can become a painful reminder of the colonial relationships that defined their membership in the congregation for so long. Still struggling to be seen as equal partners by their Belgian counterparts, Congolese sisters’ efforts to support the Belgian Province are not always appreciated. In the words of an American missionary who witnessed the evolution of the Congo-Kinshasa Province firsthand, Sometimes the relationship between the ex-colonial power and the colonized people can be tense. The sisters here in Congo, when they see our Belgian sisters getting old and closing down schools, they take that very personally. You know, “This is our school. It has been our school for 150 years . . . How can they let it go? It’s ours. Should we go out to help them?” And the Belgian sisters say, “No, you don’t have the degree . . . the diploma that we need, and we don’t want you to come take over our school. We have laypeople who can take over our schools.”

Although Congolese sisters’ sense of shared mission and legacy is not always reciprocated by Belgian sisters, these attitudes have not thwarted their efforts to support the province. In 2012, three Congolese sisters were already engaged in reverse-missioning to Belgium, living together in Thuin and working with local youth. I met one of these women, Sr. Bertille, when she returned to Kimwenza briefly that summer and was happy to meet her again at the motherhouse in Namur. We exchanged greetings, and she shared pictures of the vow ceremony that had taken place in Kimwenza

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after I returned home. At the time, I was fascinated by the efforts of Congolese sisters in Belgium but uncertain how such reverse-missioning would be received because of doubts expressed by American and Belgian sisters. For example, when a Congolese sister died unexpectedly in Belgium, one middle-aged Belgian sister shared her disappointment at the negative response of her community members to Congolese burial traditions. These observations made her pessimistic about the potential for building a deeper sense of partnership between Belgian and Congolese sisters in the future.

The Circle of Religious Life: A Congolese Community in the Place of Julie’s Birth In 2019, a friend in the congregation traveled from Boston to Chicago for work and spent the evening with my family. She was always a great storyteller, and I enjoyed listening to news of her extended family and recent adventures in ministry. I asked how certain sisters in Boston were doing, and we talked about the transition to the new East-West Province, which was established in 2014 and includes the former Boston, Ipswich, Connecticut, Chesapeake, and California provinces. “Oh, this is great!” she told me. “It was just in Notre Dame International that there are four Congolese sisters living in Cuvilly now.” I was eager to learn more. “Is one of them Sr.  Bertille?” I asked. She could not remember the names of the sisters, but the day after she returned to Boston she sent me the newsletter. I smiled as I read the title of the cover article—“Cuvilly Story: We Dared!”—and looked at one of the photograph captions: “Since the departure of our two Belgian Sisters, we have experienced much acceptance and support from the French people, our pastor and our Bishop Jacque Benoît-Gonnin.” I recognized three of the four sisters from my time in Kimwenza, and as I read the newsletter my eyes widened to see two of the sisters pictured in jeans, which would have been unimaginable at the provincial house. Browsing through the website of the Soeurs de Notre Dame de Namur Belgique Sud—France for more information, I learned there is now a Congolese sister on the BelgiumSouth provincial leadership team and read with interest how the Belgian sisters describe the cross-province collaborations in which they are presently engaged. “Life is like a turning circle,” the caption began. “For more than a hundred years, the Belgian sisters have shared their material and human resources with the Congo. Today, they benefit from the presence of the Congolese sisters who share the mission with them in Thuin, Namur, and Cuvilly.”18

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As evident in this most recent development within the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, global sisterhood continues to develop in surprising and unpredictable ways within women’s religious orders. When I visited Cuvilly in 2012 and listened to a Belgian sister describe her experiences as a missionary in Congo at the dining room table, I could not have imagined that six years later, some of the sisters I met at the provincial house in Kimwenza would be living there, doing pastoral work among the churches of the St. Julie Billiart Parish. In this book, I have argued that although symbols, texts, ideas, material resources, and people flow from one place to another through the congregation’s transnational network, the everyday informal practices of Sisters of Notre on the ground remain firmly rooted in their local communities and regional contexts. At the same time, the future of such historically contingent relationships between the people and places described in each chapter are impossible to predict. While the logics and mentalities of colonialism persist in some elements of contemporary religious life, the many demographic, geographic, and religious landscapes Catholic sisters travel are changing rapidly, opening up new possibilities for leadership among women in the Global South. Congolese women who overcame such obstacles to become Sisters of Notre Dame are now continuing the work to which Julie Billiart committed herself—re-evangelizing France—in the very place of her birth. This unusual homecoming brings up new questions regarding who will be the carriers of Catholic missionary activity in the future, as well as where their efforts will be directed and if the spirituality of African sisters may offer a new model for Christian renewal globally.

APPENDIX

Research Methodology

My interest in women’s religious life began in San Antonio, Texas, during the year I spent working at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC). From August 2004 to June 2005, I coordinated a small social-services office for the church, assisted with the parish youth programs, and worked closely with the Fr. Marty Elsner, the Jesuit pastor of the church. Although I was brought up Catholic in a small town in Washington State, I never attended parochial school. Before living in San Antonio, I remember meeting only one Catholic sister, a fiery progressive woman who had antiwar buttons pinned to her purple T-shirt when she spoke at the University of Washington’s Newman Center during my senior year of college. In San Antonio, our JVC community lived in a former convent adjoining Our Lady of Guadalupe, and we had a Catholic sister as a neighbor just across the parking lot. I met several American and Irish sisters who lived in the city and visited a “Sister Farm” focused on ecological sustainability as part of the program. From these experiences, one conversation with a local sister stood out to me. Sr. Alice, a Sister of the Incarnate Word, invited our community over for dinner one evening. When someone asked Sr. Alice why she had decided to become a sister, she answered, “Because I wanted to improve the situation of women in our society.” I thought back to this conversation at many points in the coming months, struck by the contradictions sisters manage within an institution that affirms sex differences organizationally and theologically. A few years later, I had the opportunity to hear the full story of Sr. Alice’s religious vocation, and it only further fueled my interest in these women’s unique experiences within the Catholic Church. When I began graduate school in Boston, a Jesuit friend invited me to

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Mass at the Congolese Mwinda Catholic Community in Lynn, Massachusetts. I began to visit the community occasionally and, one evening, had the opportunity to participate in a mass celebrated in the Congolese Rite. I watched Congolese priests and altar servers processing to the front of the church with slow, deliberate, rhythmic motions, wondering how this distinct form of Catholic religious practice developed over time. Over the next year, I posed these questions to the close-knit group of African Jesuits in Cambridge and Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, who gathered regularly to eat together at one of the local residences. I learned that prior to Vatican II, the episcopal conference in the Democratic Republic of Congo encouraged the development of African philosophy and theology through local institutions and liturgical commissions. With the help of a Belgian missionary, one of these commissions developed the Missa Luba, setting the Latin mass to traditional music of the region and contributing to the development of le rite zaïrois (also known as the Congolese Rite) for celebration of the Eucharist. While experimenting with local liturgy, community members reflected on how elements of traditional culture—such as the role of the village chief, the veneration of ancestors, and Congolese dance—could be incorporated into a more culturally resonant form of the Roman Rite. As I spoke with Congolese friends, I wondered if the Congolese Rite could, in the words of Jacob Olupona, “preserve a non-Western memory” within a Western religious tradition brought to the country through Belgian colonization.1

Studying an International Women’s Religious Order At Brandeis University, Wendy Cadge first encouraged me to think about studying a women’s religious order as a transnational organization. As I considered a multisite research design, I studied international congregations that had groups of Catholic sisters in Boston and Kinshasa. Because I was developing a comparative case study, it was important to work with US and Congolese Catholic sisters who were members of the same religious order. I first considered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMMs), but when I began to think through logistics on the ground, I soon realized it would be difficult to travel to the order’s communities outside the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital city of Kinshasa, as many members work in rural areas that are hard to reach because of the country’s poor transportation infrastructure. So I began to explore other possible orders with a strong presence in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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After a Congolese friend suggested the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, I began reading about their history and met with two American sisters in Ipswich to discuss my ideas. These meetings gave me a glimpse of the important role the order played in the founding of Boston’s parochial school system and the extent of collaboration between American and Congolese sisters within the organization. I learned that the Sisters of Notre Dame were an international religious congregation but were not founded specifically for overseas missions in the way that “missionary institutes” such as the FMMs or the Maryknoll Sisters were. When women enter missionary institutes, they assume they will be asked to leave their country of origin and travel to other nations because this is the purpose for which their congregation was founded. When women enter international orders that were founded for other reasons, the possibility of working across borders may or may not enter into their expectations or experiences as members of the organization, which made the case all the more interesting to me. Although the foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame imagined her sisters going wherever they were needed, the first goal of the congregation is the education of poor women and girls. Later, as I read the mission statement of the organization, I was struck by the phrase “women with hearts as wide as the world.” I wondered if or how sisters translated this metaphor into their daily lives and work across borders.

Organizational Access Convinced that the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur would be a strong transnational case for my research, I met with a handful of sisters in Boston, Ipswich, and Worcester to talk about my potential research and learn more about the work of the congregation. Some sisters seemed skeptical about my project, and others were enthusiastic. I was especially encouraged by a sister who told me that of all the sixteen countries where there are Notre Dame communities, the Congo-Kinshasa Province would be the best place to do this type of comparative work. She explained that with the exception of a few missionaries, the province is made up entirely of local sisters, and she argued that the religious life initially brought to the region by Belgian missionaries in the late nineteenth century has been deeply inculturated by Congolese members. After my first meetings with Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, I followed several steps to secure permission to study the congregation at the organizational level. For several months, I was in direct contact with the congregational leader, an American sister from the Ohio Province. As designated

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leader of the five-person congregational leadership team, she was residing in Rome and traveling throughout the year to visit the institute’s provinces worldwide. Corresponding by email, we navigated different time zones and travel plans to schedule conversations over Skype. After my first conversation with the congregational leader in December 2011, she presented my research proposal to the full leadership team during a January meeting in Rome. While the Congo-Kinshasa and BelgiumSouth provinces granted immediate permission, US leadership requested more information about the interviews and archival research I would be conducting. After sending letters of introduction, writing additional project descriptions, and responding to requests for more information, I waited nervously until I received final consent from the US provinces at the beginning of March. After securing organizational permission for the proposed research, my first step was to meet with the Boston and Ipswich leadership teams. For the Boston Province, this meant sitting down with my “point person” on the team at their offices in Everett and being individually introduced to the other two members of the leadership team. In Ipswich, this took place through a more formal meeting with leadership. After these meetings, teams sent out separate and joint messages to sisters in the provinces explaining who I was, why I might be contacting them, and extending a general call for participants. I noticed the language used to introduce me in one email message to members focused on permission, sincerity, and exploring topics “with” members of the province. “We would like to introduce Ms. Casey Clevenger, a doctoral student at Brandeis University who has requested permission to focus her research on the experiences of Sisters of Notre Dame in the U.S., the Congo, and in Belgium,” read one line. “We have met with Casey and experienced her sincerity and eagerness to explore with members of the Boston Province our expression of the N.D. charism,” explained another.

Participant Observation and Interviews My multisited comparative ethnography of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur involved data collection in the United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Belgium during fourteen months of fieldwork between March 2012 and May 2013. The organization has approximately 1,400 members located in sixteen countries on five continents. Like other Catholic religious orders, the Institute of the Sisters of Notre Dame is organized

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in regional communities called provinces. At the time of my fieldwork, the congregation had eighteen provinces, including two located in the greater Boston area with a combined 315 members. I interviewed members of both the Boston and Ipswich provinces because of their shared regional history and because members of these provinces may work at the same ministry sites or live together in the same communities. The Democratic Republic of Congo has one province, the Congo-Kinshasa Province, with approximately 120 members. In September 2014, more than a year after I finished data collection, five provinces in the United States—Boston, Ipswich, Connecticut, California, and Baltimore / Washington, DC—joined together to form the new East-West Province. In the greater Boston area, I interviewed twenty-seven Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who were members of either the Boston or Ipswich province. I spent time at local ministries, schools, and residences in addition to attending a few community dinners and celebrations during the spring and fall of 2012. During the summer of 2012, I traveled to Kinshasa for fieldwork, living at the provincial house of the congregation in Kimwenza for two months and spending time in communities located in Kisantu and Lemfu. In total, I interviewed thirty Sisters of Notre Dame who belong to the Congo-Kinshasa Province and one American missionary from another province. I visited a number of ministries in the region and observed daily religious and organizational practices in order to compare the experiences of Congolese women to their American counterparts. To supplement data collection in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, I conducted archival research at the international motherhouse of the congregation in Namur, Belgium, for ten days in October 2012 and did twenty interviews in the Belgium-South Province. I also spent a week at the US archive in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May 2013 and interviewed a handful of sisters there. My interviews with sisters in Belgium and Ohio provided important context for my focus on the congregation in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but they are not featured prominently in this book. Throughout my fourteen months of fieldwork, I coded and analyzed the themes and findings emerging from my data inductively, drawing on the principles of grounded theory.2 Practically, this meant transcribing interviews, taking ethnographic field notes, and writing analytic memos throughout a year of fieldwork across research sites in Boston, Kinshasa, Cincinnati, and Namur. In the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, my findings were shaped by the type of access I negotiated

214 / Appendix

and personal characteristics—such as age, race/ethnicity, culture, and language—that came to define me as a researcher in either location. In the Boston and Ipswich provinces, I had the freedom to navigate the physical landscape of the region independently without relying on the guidance or transportation of sisters. I could travel between offices and communities in my own car, schedule interviews at times that were convenient for me, and take time and space to write field notes and follow hunches. In the Congo-Kinshasa Province, the poor transportation and my integration into daily convent life made me very reliant on sisters when visiting ministry sites or spending time in communities outside the Kimwenza provincial house. When I did have the opportunity to spend a few days at Notre Dame communities in Kisantu and Lemfu, I rode with sisters who were traveling between cities to attend funerals. The lack of control over my schedule and mobility was both a challenge and a unique opportunity as I experienced community life within the convent. Recruiting Participants in Greater Boston When I began my fieldwork in the spring of 2012, I had lived in Boston for almost four years. As a graduate student who often moved in circles of other graduate students or Boston transplants, I began learning a new geography of the city. I spent more time in South Boston and Dorchester than I had at any previous point, and I frequently drove between Somerville and Ipswich to meet with sisters in administration or members in assisted living. As I began contacting sisters in the region, my Boston Province point person compiled a list of seventeen possible participants who represented different types of work and experiences in the region. I made my way through the list, reaching out to all the sisters and interviewing twelve. Only four sisters responded to the general call sent out by the leadership teams, so I followed a dual strategy of contacting sisters on the list and using snowball sampling to generate other participants from personal contacts and the sisters I had already met through interviews. This approach created limitations in my sample by privileging the most active and involved members of the organization whose work is more visible to leadership. In order to overcome some of these constraints, I was able to extend secondary calls for participants when I visited specific ministry sites where sisters work. I spent time at the Cristo Rey Notre Dame High School in Lawrence, the Notre Dame Education Center in South Boston, Julie’s Family Learning Program in Dorchester, and Project Care and Concern in Dorchester, as well as several of the community’s resi-

Research Methodology / 215

dences in Greater Boston. This enabled me to recruit a more diverse group of participants but likely left out less socially networked members of the organization. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I occasionally found myself adapting to the brusque New England mannerisms of some sisters I met. At other times, I was uneasy about how sisters viewed my motivations for the research. I felt the need to convince them that my project was motivated by a genuine interest in their experiences and was informed by respect for their work around the world. In the beginning of my fieldwork in Boston, one sister commented that she thought I might be Jewish when she read the initial email introducing me as a graduate student at Brandeis. Although I was open about my Catholic background and experiences in interviews, sharing my religious identity did not always help establish rapport at the beginning interviews. A few older sisters seemed simply confused by the fact that their organization or experiences could be the focus of an academic study. In addition, my relative youth brought so much attention in the first meetings with sisters that I started including my age in letters of introduction. After hearing “You are so young,” and “Look at her; she is so young!” a few times, usually with excessive gesturing, I added a line to my emails—“I am a thirty-one-year-old graduate student”—to be clear about my age and to avoid sisters jumping to the conclusion that I was younger than I might appear to them. Although it was difficult to predict how individual sisters would respond to my research, I found that after beginning interviews with the question “How did you first learn about the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur?,” most interviews proceeded in a conversational style. My script, which I shortened and reworked after the first few interviews, focused on four areas. These included personal experiences in religious life, how participants perceive the roles and responsibilities of Catholic sisters, individual and organizational participation in public life, and transnational experiences and relationships. In some interviews, I asked many follow-up questions, and in others, sisters spoke at length with very little prompting. Falling in the latter category, a few interviews were very long as sisters gave detailed and self-reflexive accounts of their experiences and work in religious life. During these two to three hour interviews, I sometimes had to pause the conversation and excuse myself for a glass of water or a bathroom break. Some sisters confided very emotional stories. A number of women shared personal religious experiences with me, and one woman narrated the experience of falling in love with a priest and choosing to remain a sister rather than leave religious life to marry him. Many talked about managing the

216 / Appendix

initial or ongoing disapproval of family members regarding their decision to enter. Women who felt comfortable discussing these intimate details offered perspective on the commitments and relationships at stake when deciding to become or remain a member of the congregation. Before traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo in June, I revised my interview script with attention to how certain questions would translate into the Congolese context and the French language. I workshopped my questions with a Congolese Jesuit friend, who assisted me with the final translation of the script, paying careful attention to how specific religious concepts and ideas might travel across borders. At the provincial house in Kimwenza, a Congolese sister with a background in social sciences also agreed to do a preliminary review of the interview questions. Fieldwork in the Congo-Kinshasa Province When I arrived in Kinshasa, I encountered an entirely different set of “entry” problems than in Boston. As I stood beside the single conveyor belt at the N’djili Airport in a hot, stuffy, and crowded baggage claim area, I wondered if my two suitcases packed with my own clothing and first aid supplies, T-shirts, and scarves for the sisters would ever arrive. The conveyer belt jammed time and time again as I kept watch for my bags and scanned the crowd for the driver who would transport me to Procure St.  Anne’s, where the Congo-Kinshasa Province had arranged for me to stay my first night; I was relieved when I spotted the pink bandana tied around one of my suitcases and located the driver. The next afternoon, the CongoKinshasa provincial arrived at the residence in a large, white SUV accompanied by a sister who spoke English. On the bumpy ascent to Kimwenza, we stopped at a grocery store where the provincial instructed me to select a few snacks for myself. I chose a few packets of biscuits, and we were on the road again. As I settled into my room at the provincial house in Kimwenza, sisters made sure I knew about prayer and mealtimes. The provincial told me to sleep in the first morning and not worry about waking up early for lauds, since I must be exhausted from my travels. Despite the kind welcome and orientation, I initially felt lost, confused, and out of place. I went to Mass on time every morning and evening, I shuffled between French prayer books and Kikongo and Lingala hymns with the guidance of a few thoughtful sisters, and I was never late to a meal, even if I was not hungry. Nonetheless, I felt very self-conscious and unsure of myself as the only white American anglophone nonsister staying in the community. Initially, I was

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also uncertain how to approach sisters about interviews. Making things more difficult, I soon learned that Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame were not accustomed to structured interviews because the province usually gathered information through written surveys. To help overcome some of these obstacles, I requested permission to print additional copies of my French interview questions using the province copy machine so that I could share them widely. During my first week at the provincial house, I worked to convince sisters that I could help with daily chores like washing and drying dishes, setting the table for the next meal, weeding in the garden, and roughly stitching blouse sleeves, although they were reluctant to agree to it at first. Sisters worried over me initially—I would burn my skin in the hot dishwater, get tired in the garden, or prick my finger with a needle—but gradually, they accepted my participation. I also became preoccupied with showing sisters that I was familiar with Congolese cooking and could both eat and enjoy the same meals as everyone else in the community. In Boston, Congolese friends had introduced me to cassava-based foods like fufu and pondu, as well as salted fish, mfumbwa made of pondu and ground peanuts, and other popular Congolese dishes. As I listened to warnings that I might get sick, I tried to both explain and demonstrate that I would be OK, filling my plate with the Congolese food everyone else was eating and the “American” food that was set out for me on a separate tray. When my attempts to tell other sisters that I did not need a special meal prepared for me failed, I went to talk to the cook directly and tried to explain that I enjoyed her cooking and the meals that she prepared for everyone. A thin smiling woman, she looked interested and amused. One day, the separate dishes disappeared from the buffet table, and I was relieved to find I could sit with Congolese sisters and share in the community meal. Sisters gradually stopped fretting over my eating habits in front of me, and on the rare occasion that we had an outsider join us for a meal, sisters would point out to them how I ate Congolese food. After leaving the Congo-Kinshasa Province, it seemed as if I was most often remembered for my eating habits. A sociology mentor with connections in Kimwenza wrote to tell me that her friend had spoken with one of the sisters while on a retreat at Manresa shortly after I left. The sister told her they were happy with my visit for “among other things—the positive way in which [I had] responded to the food served in the convent.” My mentor laughed and explained, “Georgette told me that she explained to the sister with whom she spoke that your admirable response was attribut-

218 / Appendix

able to the way that your vocation as a sociologist had prepared you!” As Sr. Yvette and I corresponded by email that fall, she also told me I was remembered within the community: “especially [for] your simplicity with an international stomach—that is to say, you eat everything; even the cooks think a lot about you.” Because food was such a focal point of my own experience within the community, it became a metaphor in my own thinking about relationships between insiders and outsiders. White ethnographers often talk about the moments when they are symbolically identified as a member of the social group or setting they are observing. Being named a member of the group is so significant because it affirms and validates one’s presence and integration in an unfamiliar context. I was no different. I can clearly recall the moments when my participation in daily life was embraced with surprising warmth and enjoyment. At a neighborhood first communion party I attended during my first week in Kimwenza, the group of sisters who brought me was pleased when I agreed to follow some of them into the circle of people dancing. One sister pressed a Congolese note into my hand as a compliment, and later that evening, another told the story to an amused audience outside the kitchen. Dancing around the narrow corridor where we were washing dishes to imitate me, she moved her hips in small circles, laughing. “Elle est congolaise!” At other times, I was acutely aware of social and cultural distance. Throughout the routines of daily life, many sisters assumed my incompetence at domestic activities and responsibilities. Eating lunch at the postulant house one afternoon, the postulants were surprised to learn I could eat with a plate in my lap while the dining room was being painted a bright shade of green. Once, in an exasperating exchange with a concerned sister while helping hem sleeves, I held up a sewing needle and pricked myself to assure her I could survive potential sewing injuries. Another afternoon, I sat on the floor of the novitiate common area with a sister, tying packets of homemade ice cream to be frozen and sold the next morning. I initially tied the small plastic baggies too loosely around the contents and the sister shook her head and stated firmly, “No, you cannot do this.” I paused for a minute. “Please let me try,” I responded. “Will you show me how one more time?” She agreed, demonstrating how to twist and tie the top. I carefully followed her example, and she gave me her approval to continue helping. In all the public places I entered, with the exception of religious spaces, my presence drew a great deal of attention and loud commentary. Walking on the road, local people would shout, “Mundele! Mundele! Mundele!” (the Lingala word for European or light-skinned person), even when I traveled the short distance between the provincial house and the nearby

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Jesuit community. As I walked with the Mayemba family around N’djili children added, “Chinoise! Chinoise! Chinoise!” to this refrain. When I asked my friend Emery why people were calling me Chinese, he told me that few light-skinned people spend time in N’djili, and those who do are usually workers from China. In puzzling contrast, when touring the grounds of the Kimwenza dispensary with Sr. Mamy one afternoon, two different people commented that we looked alike. This made us both laugh since apart from round jawlines, there was nothing about our outward appearances or the way we were dressed that would make such comments obvious. Midway through my stay in Kimwenza, I struggled with fatigue from waking up early every morning for Mass, trying to be as alert and observant as possible for the entire day, and communicating in French. I started skipping Saturday morning mass to give myself a little more space and an extra hour of sleep. I spent a few days and nights outside the convent, staying with the family of a close friend in N’djili on two occasions. The Mayemba family lifted my spirits, gave me a mental break from my project, and offered a fleeting window into the lives of local families. My interactions outside Notre Dame communities helped provide a wider context for my experiences within the convent. Two weeks after arriving in Congo, I appreciated the friendship of an American missionary who I had met previously and who was spending part of her summer at the provincial house in Kinshasa. Although I made a point not to seek her out during every meal or rely heavily on her guidance, it was comforting to have another American to turn to in moments of confusion. Some evenings, she invited me into her room for a covert glass of wine, served in coffee mugs, from a bottle a Congolese sister had brought her from a trip downtown (I noticed sisters serving beer on special occasions, but wine was not regularly available). We often talked about the small regional pleasures we missed—mainly strong coffee, chocolate, and ice cream. Although this woman packed a very different set of experiences and expectations when she left Boston for the Democratic Republic of Congo, we shared a set of common cultural reference points and at times found ourselves constructed as cultural, racial, and regional “other” in similar ways. At the end of July, the provincial house became a hub of activity as Congolese sisters from across the vast province traveled to and from Kimwenza for a variety of reasons. Some sisters were on their way to international meetings in Kenya, others were returning from a Notre Dame education conference at Emmanuel College in Boston, and forty were participating in the PACE technology and English program. This period was the highlight

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of my fieldwork, as sisters I had met earlier that month in Kisantu and Lemfu greeted me, gathered in the courtyard after dinner to talk, and asked me to practice speaking English with them. While helping with the PACE computer classes, several of the sisters I befriended would wave me over to their computers with “Case! Case!” or “Kate! Kate!” to clarify instructions and discuss the day’s activities. In the evening, most sisters gathered in the community room for music, socializing, or English-language charades, which brought out the silly side of even the most reserved participants. One evening, a group of young sisters who were responsible for preparing prayers, readings, and songs for Mass the next day included me in their courtyard gathering. They asked me to read aloud from the Old Testament several times, gently correcting my poor French pronunciation and rehearsing a few hymns in English for the mass being celebrated in honor of the PACE language program. I was easily drawn into the small circle of laughter, singing, and playful banter that rippled through the cool night air. After my initial struggles to fit myself into the daily life of the provincial house, I cherished the sense of inclusion and also admired how seamlessly these women interwove community life and religious practice. As I reflected on the ways my race, nationality, and educational background shaped my experiences after returning to the United States, I thought about my interview with an American Sister of Notre Dame who has lived primarily in Congo since the 1970s. When I asked her about situations in which she has felt uncomfortable because of aspects of her identity she shared a story with me: Well, my race always. I mean, especially if people don’t know you as an individual. I mean, when you go out for a walk, the kids will all cry, “Mundele! Mundele!” which means “white person.” And that really . . . you know, I don’t want to be identified by the color of my skin. I mind that. I remember once—this is, oh, twenty years ago—I was out; I think I was on foot or on motorcycle. I think I was on foot, but I had gone out to supervise a health center that was really far away, like maybe eight, fifteen, eighteen miles that I was on foot. And I was coming back, and the farther away I was, people would wave, and they would say, “Oh, white person,” and then it changed as I got [closer]: “White woman.” As I moved along, their perception of me changed from white person to white woman [until] I think at some point I was close enough, [and] they knew I was a sister. “There’s a sister,” and then by name. And that was really interesting to see that progression—no longer being the white person but being called by name.

Research Methodology / 221 But that, being in a position [where] you’re always kind of exposed because of your race, and you always stand out. You never will blend in either. Even [if] you know the culture . . . no matter how well you know it or how long you’ve been there, you’re always, you’re always surprised. And then, physically you stand out because you’re different. So that—sometimes, it’s a challenge.

Data Collected and Analyzed At the conclusion of my fieldwork in the Boston, Ipswich, and CongoKinshasa provinces, I had conducted fifty-eight in-depth, open-ended interviews with Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, lasting between forty-five minutes to three hours. Each of these interviews was digitally recorded and later transcribed. In the greater Boston area, all twenty-seven participants were white Americans with the exception of one sister who met and joined the Sisters of Notre Dame in the United States but was born and raised in another country. One of my interviews with a Congolese sister who belonged to the Congo-Kinshasa Province also took place in Boston while she resided there. After each meeting, interview, or site visit in Massachusetts, I wrote an individual profile of my respondent, describing the interview setting, dynamics between the participant and me, important themes and narratives that emerged from our conversation, and my initial observations following our meeting. These notes were extremely helpful as I thought about how to Table A1:

Age distribution of participants

  Number of respondents Average age Median age Standard deviation of ages Minimum age Maximum age

Table A2:   PhD Master’s

American sisters

Congolese sisters

27 70 69 11 47 90

30 48 46 11 22 80

Percentage of participants with graduate degrees American sisters 30 41

Congolese sisters 0 17

222 / Appendix

move forward after each interview. When I began writing, rereading these notes helped me recapture the tone, feeling, and context of each interview. In Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu, I interviewed twenty-nine Sisters of Notre Dame who belonged to the Congo-Kinshasa Province and one American missionary sister who was not a member of either Massachusetts province. During my fieldwork in 2012, there were eleven territorial provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the three where Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur traditionally work—Bas-Congo, Bandundu, and Kinshasa—and as well as Équateur, Kasaï-Occidental, KasaïOriental, Katanga, Maniema, Nord-Kivu, Province Orientale, and SudKivu. As part of a decentralization plan laid out in the 2006 constitution but not fully implemented until 2015, these eleven provinces have been divided into twenty-six provinces (see figure 1.2). Twenty-two of my thirty Congolese participants were from the Bas-Congo (now Kongo-Central) region and eight were from the Bandundu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than half belonged to subgroups of the most prominent ethnic group in the region, the Bakongo. My sample includes twelve respondents who belong to the Ntandu/Bantandu ethnic group (BasCongo region), six to the Mbata/Bambata (Bas-Congo region), six to the Yaka/Bayaka (Bandundu region), and one respondent each of the Mbeko, Mbala, Ngombe, Ndibu, Yombe ethnic groups in Bas-Congo. One respondent was from the Pende ethnic group in Bandundu. When compared to broader demographics of the Congo-Kinshasa Province, my sample underrepresents Bayaka members from the Bandundu region, likely because I conducted all my research in Bas-Congo. Taking into account all 129 Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame, 57.3 percent are Ntandu/Bantandu from the Bas-Congo region, 22.4 percent are Yaka/Bayaka from the Bandundu region, and 20.3 percent from other groups (including the Mbala, Ngombe, Ndibu, Pende, and Yombe members, as well as some American and Belgian sisters). Kikongo was the first language of most sisters at the provincial house, and daily conversation included French, Kikongo, and Lingala, although the affairs of the province are conducted in French. Twenty-five of my interviews with Congolese sisters were conducted primarily in French and six were conducted in English. When a respondent preferred to speak with me in English, I conducted the interview alone. When conducting interviews in French, a Congolese sister who agreed to assist with translation and cultural issues during my stay was usually present. Scheduling interviews was always difficult at the provincial house because of the structured nature of life there, and more fluid notions of time outside this structure. In the smaller convents in Kisantu and Lemfu, daily

Research Methodology / 223 Table A3: Participant demographics US sisters  

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Congolese sisters

Name

Age

Year of entrance to novitiate

Sr. Marilyn Sr. Janette Sr. Dorothy Sr. Maura Sr. Vivian Sr. Elaine Sr. Kate Sr. Eileen Sr. Judy Sr. Joan Sr. Lana Sr. Pam Sr. Betty Sr. Michelle Sr. Bridget Sr. Grady Sr. Gail Sr. Lynn Sr. Maureen Sr. Alice Sr. Anne Sr. Genie Sr. Ellen Sr. Linda Sr. Jo Sr. Lisa Sr. Claudia

90 86 87 82 82 84 78 72 72 76 72 71 69 67 71 68 67 68 65 62 60 62 59 67 60 47 52

1940 1943 1946 1947 1947 1947 1951 1957 1957 1957 1958 1959 1961 1961 1962 1962 1962 1963 1964 1968 1971 1971 1972 1977 1981 1999 2006

 

Name

Age

Year of entrance to novitiate

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Sr. Josette Sr. Céline Sr. Élodie Sr. Clemence Sr. Pascal Sr. Lylie Sr. Bernadette Sr. Maryse Sr. Christine Sr. Amélie Sr. Simone Sr. Colette Sr. Jacqueline Sr. Henriette Sr. Odette Sr. Leah Sr. Genevieve Sr. Agnes Sr. Sylvie Sr. Victoire Sr. Capucine Sr. Mamy Sr. Geraldine Sr. Aurelie Sr. Louise Sr. Yvette Sr. Violette Sr. Christine Sr. Aurore Sr. Claire

74 80 57 56 57 58 51 45 50 50 48 46 47 46 46 45 43 42 46 43 41 39 40 37 36 38 22 35 32 26

1961* 1961** 1975 1976 1978 1979 1982 1982 1983 1984 1986 1987 1987 1988 1988 1990 1991 1992 1993 1993 1994 1995 1997 1999 1999 2001 2002 2003 2004 2009

* previously St. Marie of Kisantu ** entered St. Marie of Kisantu in 1953

life seemed less rigid and more relaxed. It was easier to find time to meet with sisters and to join them in unplanned recreational activities like walks outside or socializing with neighboring religious communities. During the Sisters of Notre Dame’s ten-day PACE education program held at the provincial house in mid-July, there were educational and recreational activities planned from morning until evening. Completely immersed in fieldwork twenty-four hours a day at the communities where I stayed in Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu, I prioritized

224 / Appendix

writing ethnographic field notes of each day’s events in the evening before bed and in the morning after Mass and breakfast. I always kept a tiny pink notebook in my pocket, where I sometimes recorded notes and names to jog my memory when I sat down to write. The pace of fieldwork in Congo also shaped my field notes. In the first month, I had fewer interviews as community members were still getting to know me, so I spent more time producing detailed accounts of daily life. In my second month, I conducted interviews at a faster pace, and life at the provincial house became busier because of summer programs and retreats taking place at the compound. I was asked to participate in a growing number of daily activities and to assist American sisters who were leading the ten-day technology seminar for forty Congolese sisters as part of the Sisters of Notre Dame PACE program. All the names of sisters in this study are pseudonyms. All my interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed in English or in English and French by a transcriptionist. I then uploaded interview transcripts into the qualitative software program, Atlas.ti. Drawing on the principles of grounded theory, I coded and analyzed the themes and findings emerging from my data inductively.3 I read interviews alongside my ethnographic field notes and developed analytic codes and categories from my data. I also coded my data comparatively, looking for variation between American and Congolese sisters and different generations of sisters. In the years since collecting the data, I have regularly returned to my field notes, transcripts, recordings, and codes for clarification and inspiration. At later stages of writing this manuscript, I reread interviews rather than returning to initial codes in order to capture a fuller picture of women’s narratives and contexts of reference.

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

This research would not have been possible without Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Boston, Ipswich, Kimwenza, Namur, and Cincinnati, who shared their lives, experiences, and community with me. I am thankful to all the sisters of the Boston and Ipswich provinces who took a chance on a young scholar from Brandeis University, many of whom were puzzled by my desire to study their organization. Once I began fieldwork in Boston, I began to feel a great responsibility to complete this work—not simply for the sake of scholarship but because of the time, wisdom, and personal stories these women so generously shared with me. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, I was deeply grateful for the hospitality, patience, curiosity, and sense of humor with which Congolese sisters included me in their daily lives. Despite moments of mutual confusion, I was moved by the warmth of the many sisters who embraced my presence among them and guided me through daily life in Kimwenza, Kisantu, and Lemfu. I would like to personally thank congregational leader Sr. Teresita Weind for helping facilitate organizational approval of my research from Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur across different regions, along with Sr. Adrienne Kapela for agreeing to host me at the provincial house in Kimwenza and Sr. Marie Gonzague Mbala for helping make the necessary arrangements for my trip. In Namur, Sr.  Paul Thérèse Vandenbyvang welcomed me to the motherhouse and introduced me to sisters across the Belgium-South Province. Before beginning my research in Boston, I had conversations with sisters Lorriane Connell, Kathleen Gallivan, Marie Angel Kitewo, Maureen Marr, Evelyn McKenna, Jennifer Pierce, and Marie Prefontaine, whose questions, suggestions, and advice were formative. By happy coincidence, Sr. Marie and I stayed at the motherhouse in Namur, Belgium, at the same time, and her lasting friendship has made the research more enjoyable.

226 / Acknowledgments

Sr. Margaret Lanen and Sr. Evelyn McKenna also followed the progress of this project from Boston to Kinshasa and back, offering encouragement along the way. I am grateful to Sr. Margaret, Sr. Marie, and Sr. Evelyn, who read the entire manuscript in its final stages and shared their feedback with me. At the provincial house in Kimwenza, I would have been lost without the friendship and integral research assistance of Sr.  Rosalie Nianga as I coped with the challenges of full immersion into the field. At the Boston Ipswich Provincial Archives, Nancy Barthelemy helped me locate important documents, clarified confusing historical details, and carefully read several early chapter drafts. In Cincinnati, archivist Sr. Louanna Orth was an enlightening and amusing guide. Sr. Joyce Meyer, PBVM, at the Global Sister Report provided a valuable perspective on the challenges facing other transnational and diocesan women’s religious orders working across Africa and provided comments on my opening chapter. The sisters I met over the course of this research continue to inspire me, and I have been enriched by the time I spent with them. Considering the historical ties between the Society of Jesus and Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, it is not surprising that I was first introduced to the congregation by a Jesuit. My dear friend Bienvenu Mayemba, SJ, suggested I talk with Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Boston, and he helped me lay the groundwork for this project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Kinshasa, the entire Mayemba family was a source of joy and encouragement during my fieldwork. Although I had not met Bienvenu’s family members face to face before arriving in Congo, they made me feel as if I were returning home when they welcomed me into their compound in N’djili. I offer a heartfelt thank you to Emery, Mie-Flore, Bertille, Mama Chris, and Vieux Berry, as well Hervé, Berby, Magnificat, Exhaucé, Irinée, Théophanie, and Grady. I will never forget the sight of handmade welcome signs hanging across the living room as I entered Emery and Bertille’s compound for the first time. The Mayembas—along with Diddy Brossala, SJ, and Jean-Pierre Bofando—gave me the opportunity to spend time outside Notre Dame convents and brought a refreshing lightness, humor, and perspective to my travels. When my sister, Molly Clevenger, and my cousin Kathleen Clevenger made the 8,500-mile journey to visit me in Kimwenza, they brought chocolate, instant coffee, and the wonderful comfort of family. Several generous grants made this research possible, including the Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship, the Association for the Sociology of Religion Joseph H. Fitcher Research Grant, the Brandeis Research Circle on Democracy and Cultural Pluralism Dissertation Grant, the Brandeis Uni-

Acknowledgments / 227

versity Mellon Dissertation Research Grant, and the Brandeis University Sociology Department Berkowitz Award and Dissertation Grant. Early drafts of chapters benefited from discussion with members of the Brandeis Dissertation Year Fellowship Seminar, led by professor Janet McIntosh, and participants in the 2015–16 Research and Analysis in the Sociology of Religion (RASR) workshop, led by professors Christian Smith and Mary Ellen Konieczny, at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society. I would not have undertaken this project without the steadfast guidance and mentorship of Wendy Cadge, who taught me how to be a sociologist. She was enthusiastic about the idea of studying a transnational religious order from the very beginning and, despite my initial misgivings, encouraged me to pursue fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As I moved from fieldwork to analysis and then writing, she was a constant sounding board and helped me turn observations into arguments. I will never forget one particular spring afternoon when Wendy sat with me on the floor of her office and helped me sort individually labeled note cards into new chapter outlines. This is only one example of the remarkable mentorship she has provided. Wendy’s confidence that my manuscript would one day be a book helped me believe it too. At Brandeis, Karen Hansen and Carmen Sirianni always made time to sit down with me and talk through research and writing challenges. I am grateful for their academic and personal support. David Cunningham provided valuable feedback on my research design at the very inception of the project and offered critical advice as I navigated the publication process. Michele Dillon at University of New Hampshire posed important questions about transnational influences on sisters’ everyday practices, and Bernadette McCauley at Hunter College helped me rethink the historical aspects of this project. Renée Fox was willing to share her brilliance, wit, sociological wisdom, and personal experience conducting fieldwork in Congo as we met in person and talked over the phone. She also introduced me to her close friend Suzanne Mikanda, whom I had the privilege of meeting in Kimwenza. Barbara Eaton carefully translated and transcribed many of my interviews and has read each page of this manuscript countless times, improving it with her impeccable French, lively interest in my findings, and careful editorial assistance at every stage. As I’ve worked toward one deadline after another over the years, she has become a valued colleague. Kyle Wagner, a fellow Pacific Northwesterner living in Chicago, is everything I could have hoped for in an editor and has patiently and cheerfully guided me through each

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step toward publication. His feedback on my introduction was an important turning point in the development of the manuscript, and the external reviews he commissioned were invaluable in shaping the final product. I am especially grateful to these outside reviewers for helping me frame my arguments more broadly within the context of women’s religious life across the African continent and encouraging me to stay focused on the ethnographic insights at the heart of the project. Dylan Montanari and Tamara Ghattas provided crucial assistance during the final stages of production. Along the way, Nicky Fox, Amanda Gengler, Clare Hammonds, Alexandra Herzog, Becca Loya, Elizabeth Perten, Emily Sigalow, Jill Smith, Roberto “Tito” Soto-Carrión, and Ken Sun were supportive colleagues and friends who shared the ups and downs of academic life. In addition to the time we spent together in classes, meetings, study dates, and writing groups, we celebrated important personal milestones together—weddings, births, graduations, and new jobs. When I became a mother, I appreciated the examples of Nicky and Emily, who balanced the demands of parenthood and academia with grace, determination, and amazing senses of humor. At critical stages in the development of this manuscript, I have turned to Amanda, Nicky, and Ken for advice and help rearticulating core ideas and concepts. I am thankful to Amanda and Nicky for talking me through my worst episodes of writer’s block—but most of all for keeping me company during isolating periods of the writing process and never tiring of hearing me talk about this project. James Clowes, my charismatic Comparative History of Ideas professor at the University of Washington, was the first person to introduce me to transnational ways of thinking. Jim was famous for integrating study abroad programs with community-based learning in creative and unexpected ways, and he was beloved to the many undergraduates he inspired, challenged, and treated as equals. I met my redheaded college friend, Sean Patrick MacRae Murphy—“Smurphy”—on Jim’s yearlong study abroad program. We traveled through many cities and countries together, and Sean often mentioned the work of his aunt, a Catholic sister. I would have loved to share this book with Jim and Sean, and with Craig Carson, Fr. Martin Elsner, SJ, and Br. Alexander Gussio, SJ. I am thankful for my loving family. My grandmother, Barbara Beasley Clevenger, was unable to finish her undergraduate degree at Whitman College because of family tragedy, but she and my grandfather encouraged and supported the pursuit of higher education for all seven of their grandchildren. The day my cousin Kathleen and I graduated from the Univer-

Acknowledgments / 229

sity of Washington, she donned my graduation cap for a few minutes and announced that perhaps she would consider going back to complete her degree. Spirited, outspoken, and fearless, she has been a model of determination and resilience for me since childhood. My grandfathers, David Clevenger and James Ritchie, were proud of all their grandchildren, and I have three very special aunts who supported my personal and educational aspirations over the years: Karen Ritchie Parkhurst, Marci Gottstein Clevenger, and Cathy Muller Clevenger. When I was first accepted into the sociology program at Brandeis, Karen was the only member of my West Coast family who was familiar with the university. Thankfully, her enthusiasm was contagious. Despite differences of culture, language, and nation, my wonderful in-laws—Tsehay Fesseha Simret, Tsegazeab Tewolde Kelati, Azieb Araia Mehari, Winta Tsegazeab Tewolde, Essey Tsegazeab Tewolde, and Rahwa Tsegazeab Tewolde—never hesitated when welcoming me into their extended family, cheering me on from London, Asmara, and Atlanta, making me feel as if I had always belonged in their lives. I am especially indebted to my sister-in-law Rahwa, and to Dana Henderson, for helping care for my son Jamie during his first year of life. My father, Greg Clevenger, long puzzled by my decision to stay in school for so many years, has been a model of hard work, dependability, and commitment to family my entire life. My mother, Jill Ritchie Clevenger, encouraged my love of reading and writing from a young age. She began editing my papers in elementary school and thankfully never stopped, poring over countless pages of my writing, never hesitating to tell me when a sentence was too long, too confusing, or too laden with academic jargon. Although this is not the novel she has always encouraged me to write, she has believed in my dream of becoming an author since I was a child. Along with my sister, Molly, my parents have provided a strong foundation and deep roots from which to take on new challenges. I am also grateful to my supportive brother-in-law Sam Hardy for always taking an interest in my work. Turning this manuscript into a book without institutional support or an academic appointment was a challenge. As I pieced together part-time research jobs, adjunct instructor positions, and academic affiliations after graduate school, my husband, Henok Tsegazeab Tewolde, never wavered in his commitment to this project. His confidence in me and faith in this book have propelled me forward during the most discouraging moments of the long journey. He is my rock and my partner in the truest sense of the word. As the parent of three young children, I have often experienced writing and mothering as oppositional forces in my life, pulling me in different

230 / Acknowledgments

directions. My daughter, Simret Beasley Tewolde, and my son, James Reid Tsegazeab Tewolde, have grown up alongside this book and made its completion a slower but more meaningful process. Matias Clevenger Tewolde arrived just in time for the final edits. They are the great joy of our lives. I dedicate this book to my family.

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE

1.

2.

Religious sisterhood is one form of “consecrated life” in the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic sisters belong to “canonical institutes” approved by the Vatican and typically live in community with other members, although there are more diverse living arrangements among sisters in the United States. These institutes are also known as “religious institutes,” “orders,” and “congregations.” Abbreviations for Sister (Sr.) and Mother General (Mo.) are used throughout this text. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) established that sisters and nuns are not members of the clergy but laywomen who take religious vows of poverty, obedience, and celibacy. Although the terms sister and nun are often used interchangeably, sisters belong to apostolic groups that are engaged in a variety of ministries, while nuns live cloistered lives in convents and monasteries. Sisters may belong to a “diocesan” or “pontifical” institute like the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, which is accountable to the Vatican rather than local bishops and may be located in several dioceses across multiple countries and continents. There are also different types of Roman Catholic priests. Secular clergy do not take vows of poverty but are ordained for a particular diocese under the authority of the local bishop and typically work in parishes. Like sisters, priests who belong to religious orders take vows of poverty, obedience, and celibacy; are not under the jurisdiction of bishops; and usually live within their orders with more autonomy from the church hierarchy. Both men and women who belong to religious orders may be referred to generally as “religious.” See Mary Johnson, Patricia Wittberg, and Mary L. Gautier, New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) for a history of the diverse forms of religious life in the Catholic Church. Like other Catholic religious orders, the institute of the Sisters of Notre Dame is organized in regional communities called provinces. At the time of my fieldwork, the congregation had eighteen provinces, including two located in the greater Boston area, the Boston and Ipswich provinces, with a combined 315 members. The Democratic Republic of Congo had one province, the Congo-Kinshasa Province, with approximately 129 members. In September 2014, five provinces in the United States— Boston, Ipswich, Connecticut, California, and Baltimore / Washington DC—joined together to form the new East-West Province. Every six years, delegates from five continents participate in a general chapter meeting to “formulate broad policy, to

232 / Notes to Pages 3–7

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

give new direction to the religious community, and to elect a Congregational Leadership Team,” which implements the directives and policies set by membership. Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, “Our Leadership,” accessed August 21, 2018, https:// www.sndden.org/who-we-are/our-leadership/. Seeds of Hope: Sisters in Action around the World, “The Power of the Sun,” National Catholic Reporter, October 15, 2009, accessed February 19, 2019, https://www .ncronline.org/news/power-sun. Existing studies of transnational organizations focus on those that address immigration, global health, and humanitarianism. The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents edited by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Fernández-Kelly (New York: Berghahn, 2015) studies eighteen grassroots organizations formed by immigrants to protect themselves in receiving countries across the globe. While this book highlights how immigrants draw on transnationalism as they respond to the challenges of migration and development, it reveals little about organizations that enable transnational exchanges among nonmigrants who belong to groups active across the Global South and Global North. Doctors without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Médecins sans Frontières by Renée Fox (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) details the development and implementation of MSF’s transnational vision, and The World Health Organization between North and South by Nitsan Chorev (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012) shows how the WHO reframed and responded to competing demands from different nations when developing international health policies. In The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Monika Krause reveals how shared logics of practice and organizational structures among transnational humanitarian groups lead the industry to favor relief projects with “marketable” beneficiaries. Known as African prints or specialty African prints, these fabrics are an important form of nonverbal communication for women across the continent. Divided into different categories of quality depending on the manufacturing process, wax prints (wax batik) are the most expensive, with the pattern printed on both sides using a hot wax resin. Less expensive nonwax prints (fancy or roller prints) are produced for mass consumption; designs are applied to one side of ordinary fabrics with engraved metal rollers in a continuous process, and the producer, name of the product, and registration number of the design are printed on the selvage of the fabric to protect the design and indicate the quality of the material. Silke Jurkowitsch and Alexander Sarlay, “An Analysis of the Current Denotation and Role of Wax Fabrics in the World of African Textiles,” International Journal of Management Cases 12, no. 4 (2010): 28–48; and Ruth Nielsen, “The History and Development of Wax-Printed Textiles Intended for West Africa and Zaire,” in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 467–98. Marie-Angèle Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch of Notre Dame: 1959–2009 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2009). The motifs of African prints may tell a story, possess symbolic significance, serve as identification, or display an ornamental pattern. Historical or current events, political figures, and ideas may provide inspiration for a particular design. In 1946, the Belgian Congo commissioned cloth with the allied victory design, which incorporated the busts of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill along with tanks and the dove of peace. Although many of the prints inspired by con-

Notes to Pages 8–10 / 233

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

temporary or historical events are not in production long, fabrics commemorating the death of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba and US president John F. Kennedy proved more enduring. Nielsen, “History, Development of Wax-Printed Textiles,” 467–98. The Democratic Republic of Congo has been known by different names over time, including the Kingdom of Kongo (until 1908), the Congo Free State (1885–1908), Belgian Congo (1908–60), Republic of Congo/Congo-Kinshasa (1960–65), and Zaire (1971–96). Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Each religious order professes an identifying charism, or “faith-vision,” that is linked to its particular ministry. It can be understood as a special grace or a “gift of the original empowerment of the founder,” transmitted through the Holy Spirit to be realized by the community through service or ministry within the church and society. Pope Paul VI and later Pope John Paul II talked about charism as a living reality “which causes the congregation to continually confront questions of growth and change, even radical external change.” Mary Vincentia Joseph, “Transmission of the Charism of the Religious Community: Bon Secours Study” (1987), 3. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, the twenty-eighth superior general of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), is widely credited with introducing the term inculturation to describe processes of localization, adaptation, translation, and contextualization that have been at work since the birth of Christianity. He first used the word in a 1978 letter to Jesuits living around the world. Clarifying the focus of the global church and suggesting that inculturation was a theological category, he argued, “Inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that his experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question, but becomes a principle that animates, directs, and unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring about ‘a new creation.’” Lou F. McNeil, Recovering American Catholic Inculturation: John England’s Jacksonian Populism and Romanticist Adaptation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008). Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt, “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 219. Peggy Levitt, “Redefining the Boundaries of Belonging: The Institutional Character of Religious Life,” Sociology of Religion 65, no. 1 (2004): 14; Peggy Levitt, God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (New York: New Press, 2007). Peggy Levitt, “God, Ethnicity, and Country: An Approach to the Study of Transnational Religion” (paper presented at workshop on “Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives,” Princeton University, June 30–July 1, 2001), 6. Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Shiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004): 1009. Levitt and Shiller, 1011. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 117–19; and David Featherstone, Richard Phillips, and Johanna Waters, “Introduction: Spatialities of Transnational Networks,” Global Networks 7, no. 4 (2007): 386. Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, 389. Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, 389. Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, 388.

234 / Notes to Pages 11–13 20. See Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, 389. 21. The length, specific stages, and language used to describe formation may vary across congregations, but the process of discerning a call to religious life and a particular community is similar. Prior to officially entering, the woman has the opportunity to get to know community members and may be called an “aspirant.” When a woman formally enters the congregation, she may be referred to as a candidate, affiliate, or more traditionally, a “postulant” and lives in community. When a woman enters the novitiate, which prepares sisters for religious life, she is known as a “novice” and may be called “sister.” During her canonical novitiate or canonical year, a novice prays and explores the meaning of the vows, religious life, and the unique charism (spirit or character) of the community she is joining. Some congregations include a year of ministry in the novitiate. At the end of the novitiate, a sisters professes temporary vows also known as “first vows,” which are binding for a particular length of time, usually one to three years, and can be renewed. “Perpetual” or final vows are professed between three to nine years after temporary vows and are for life. Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans, “Steps and Stages of the Formation Process,” Global Sisters Report, accessed August 15, 2019, https://www.globalsistersreport.org/resources/ steps-and-stages-formation-process-women-religious-38381. 22. Nowicka finds the opposite in her study of mobile professionals who work for international organizations. Magdalena Nowicka, “Mobile Locations: Construction of Home in a Group of Mobile Transnational Professionals,” Global Networks 7, no. 1 (2007): 69–86. 23. Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, “Introduction,” 385. 24. Phyllis M. Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville: Mothers and Sisters in Troubled Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 25. J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 26. Susan Smith, “Catholic Women in Mission 1910–2010,” in A Century of Catholic Mission: Roman Catholic Missiology 1910 to the Present, ed. Stephan B. Bevans (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015), 83–91. 27. Jane Wakahiu, “Foundation of Religious Institutes and Impact of Technology Innovation on Sisters in Africa: A Sociocultural Approach,” in Voices of Courage: Historical, Socio-cultural and Educational Journeys of Women Religious in East and Central Africa, ed. Jane Wakahiu, Peter I. Gichure, and Ann Rita K. Njageh (Scranton, PA: African Sisters Education Collaborative, 2015). 28. John J. Baur, 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa: An African Church History, 2nd ed. (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2009); and Bibiana M. Ngundo and Jonathon Wiggins, Special Report: Women Religious in Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2017). 29. Peter Phan, “Vatican II: Renewal, Accommodation, Inculturation,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity, ed. Lamin Sanneh and Michael J. McClymond (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 234. 30. The other is Asia (Ngundo and Wiggins, “Women Religious in Africa”). In Roman Catholicism, vocation (or religious vocation) is commonly used to refer to an individual’s “call” to either the priesthood or a women’s religious order, although the church recognizes a “universal call to holiness” for all people. It comes from the Latin word vocare (to call) and is central to the Christian belief that God has created each person with gifts and talents to be used for certain purposes. Institute

Notes to Pages 14–15 / 235

31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

on Religious Life, “Glossary,” accessed February 19, 2019, https://religiouslife.com/ resources/glossary. Ngundo and Wiggins. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Face of Catholic Transnationalism,” in Transnational Religion and Fading States, ed. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James P. Piscatori (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 105. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival,” Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45. The little we do know about the lives of Catholic sisters outside North America and Europe has been documented through the work of historians, anthropologists, and sisters themselves. Joan Burke’s study of Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur traces the history of the congregation in the region and shows how sisters develop religious identities and practices consistent with local rituals, kinship structures, and ways of life. In rural Uganda, China Scherz finds that the forms of Catholic charity practiced by a group of sisters align more with traditional Kiganda ethics of interdependence than the sustainable development efforts advocated by international development organizations, which are viewed by locals as a refusal to redistribute wealth. Informed by these rich historical and ethnographic accounts of religious life in central and east Africa, my study moves research on Catholic sisters beyond the confines of the national state and is the first ethnographic study to focus attention on women’s religious institutes as transnational organizations. Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001); and China Scherz, Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). Helen Rose Ebaugh is one of the rare scholars to examine developments among Catholic sisters both nationally and globally. In Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States, Ebaugh argues that as social, educational, and political opportunities for American women increased, religious orders became a less appealing option for Catholic women. Before second wave feminism and the suburban integration of Catholics into American society during the mid-twentieth century, many sisters were esteemed role models for girls in working-class immigrant enclaves of the United States. Within communities where the roles of wife and mother were normative, sisters demonstrated that single women could live fulfilling lives, and make meaningful contributions to society outside their ties to men. Taking broad societal transformations across American society into account, Ebaugh argues Catholic women now have more diverse opportunities to pursue careers, whether they are single or married, and to engage in various types of social service and activism without taking religious vows. Turning her attention outside the United States, Ebaugh examines patterns in women’s religious orders worldwide, focusing on social structural change and secularization. According to her analysis of data from the Central Statistics Office of the Vatican and educational and economic measures from the United Nations World Economic Reports, less industrialized nations where opportunities for women’s mobility remain limited and birth rates remain high are not experiencing the same organizational declines as developing countries. Ebaugh concludes that despite variations in Catholic practices across countries, the fewer social and occupational opportunities women have, the more appealing religious orders will be for them. See Helen Rose Ebaugh,

236 / Notes to Pages 15–16

36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Mary Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Marie Augusta Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition: From the 1960s to the 1980s (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984); Marie Augusta Neal, From Nuns to Sisters: An Expanding Vocation (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third, 1990); Lora Anne Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1992); and Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (Albany: State University of New York, 1994). Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful; and Quiñonez, Transformation of American Catholic Sisters. The number of Catholic sisters in the United States peaked in 1965. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), there are a comparable number of sisters and priests in the United States (45,605 religious sisters and 37,181 religious and diocesan priests). Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), “Frequently Requested Church Statistics: United States Data over Time,” accessed May 1, 2018, https://cara.georgetown.edu/frequently-requested -church-statistics/. There are two categories of Catholic women’s religious institutes, “diocesan” institutes that are accountable to local bishops and “pontifical” institutes that are accountable to the Vatican and may be located in several dioceses across multiple countries or continents. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier, New Generations. When hotelier Conrad Nicholson Hilton died in 1979, he bequeathed most of his estate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation he founded in 1944. A lifelong Catholic who admired the work of women religious, Hilton favored sisters’ dedication to mission and service over other organized charities. In his last will and testament, Hilton directed the foundation to “support the Catholic sisters, who devote their love and life’s work for the good of mankind.” Prioritizing a focus on clean water/ food and agriculture, homelessness, literacy, immigrant/refugee services, education/ communication, women and children, antitrafficking efforts, leadership conferences, and health care/HIV-AIDS, each project must have at least one full-time staff member who is a vowed member of a women’s religious congregation. The foundation dedicated more than $16.5 million to Catholic sisters in 2017 alone. Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, “History,” accessed May 31, 2018, https://www.hilton foundation.org/about/history. Center for Religion and Civic Culture, “Sisters Serving the World: The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative Strategy,” accessed July 24, 2018, https:// crcc .usc .edu/ report/ sisters -serving -the -world -the -conrad -n -hilton -foundations -catholic-sisters-initiative-strategy/. For more than a decade, the Hilton Fund for Sisters has partnered with the African Sisters Education Collaborative (ASEC) to increase sisters’ access to education and professional training in anglophone Africa, supporting more than 5,300 sisters across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Lesotho, Malawi, South Sudan, and Zambia. Established in 1999 by four Catholic colleges in the United States, ASEC began by providing computer labs and technology workshops to sisters in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. African Sisters Education Collaborative (ASEC), “Our Impact,” accessed May 31, 2018, http://asec-sldi.org/ our-impact/.

Notes to Pages 17–27 / 237 42. The United Nations’ 2015 sustainable development goals include no poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation, and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice, and strong institutions; and partnership for the goals. United Nations, “Sustainable Development Goals: 17 Goals to Transform Our World,” accessed May 12, 2018, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ sustainable-development-goals/. 43. Hilton Foundation, “Catholic Sisters,” accessed July 24, 2018, https://www.hilton foundation.org/priorities/catholic-sisters; and GHR Foundation, “Sister Support,” accessed July 24, 2018, http://www.ghrfoundation.org/sister-support.html. 44. Scherz, Having People, Having Heart, 33. 45. Center for Religion and Civic Culture, “Catholic Sisters Discuss Sustainable Development in Africa at Nairobi Convening,” accessed May 31, 2018, https://crcc .usc .edu/ catholic - sisters - discuss - sustainable - development - in - africa - at - nairobi -convening/. 46. Sr. Joyce Meyer, interview with author, May 1, 2018. See also Wakahiu, “Foundation of Religious Institutes.” 47. United Nations Development Programme, “Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone” (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2016), accessed May 28, 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016 _human_development_report.pdf. 48. Lorraine Connell, “SNDdeN Photovoltaic Sites Improve Lives Dramatically,” accessed August 23, 2018, https://www.sndden.org/news-and-events/photovoltaic -project/. 49. Diana Wong and Peggy Levitt, “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa, the Tablighi Jamaat, Foguangshan in Malaysia,” Global Networks 14, no. 3(2014): 348–62. 50. Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville, 13. 51. See Magdalena Nowicka, “Mobile Locations: Construction of Home in a Group of Mobile Transnational Professionals,” Global Networks 7, no. 1 (2007): 83. C H A P T E R T WO

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Roseanne Murphy, Julie Billiart: Woman of Courage (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, “Who We Are: Our Mission,” accessed August 29, 2018, https://www.sndden.org/who-we-are/our-mission/. Diana Wong and Peggy Levitt, “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa, the Tablighi Jamaat, Foguangshan in Malaysia,” Global Networks 14, no. 3 (2014): 348–62. Wong and Levitt, 351. Nina Glick Schiller, “Transnational Social Fields and Imperialism,” Anthropological Theory 5, no. 4 (2005): 443. Thomas Blom Hansen, “Migration, Religion, and Post-imperial Formations,” Global Networks 14, no. 3 (2014): 274. Hansen, 273–90. See Hansen, 286. Hansen argues, As with the “post” in the term post-colonial, the notion of “post-imperial formations” denotes that the imperial indeed is a thing of the past in a formal

238 / Notes to Pages 28–30 sense. This very stripping away of the legitimacy of the formal aspects of the colonial-imperial order now allows us to appreciate fully the extent and depth of the naturalized common sense it created and on which it rests. Much of that common sense lives on. To use Stoler and McGranahan’s (2007) terminology, the age of “deferral” is over and a new formal order is established: colonial territories are now sovereign states and colonial subjects have become rights bearing citizens, at least in a formal sense. Yet, the mentality of the imperial formation, its horizons, tacit hierarchies and popular common sense have much longer shadows and more durable effects than any of the discursive and pragmatic arrangements that created them in the first place. The post-imperial formation is the world where sovereignty and citizenship are formally redistributed and where ideas of nationhood, self-determination, ethnic purity and belonging have become truly globalized. Yet, the reappearance of the mentality, spatial imaginings, regulatory regimes and cultural common sense of older imperial orders and the very real economic discrepancies and dynamics of the global economy constantly pierce and undermine this formal order. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

Murphy, Julie Billiart, 10. The following description of Julie’s early life was developed using this source. Murphy. Murphy, 50. Like other Catholic religious orders, the Sisters of Notre Dame still needed a religious rule, or plan of life and discipline, to govern their practices, which must be approved by the Vatican. They received a temporary rule from Père Varin that had been used by the Institute of Mary in Rome in 1797. In 1805, more women entered the community, and Père Varin gave them a new rule that differed in three important ways from other French congregations prior to the revolution. First, the Sisters of Notre Dame were to be an apostolic institute with the mission of providing education to young girls, especially the poor. Second, there were to be no distinctions between sisters. At the time, it was common in many communities to divide women into two groups along class lines: “choir sisters” enjoyed more privileges and public responsibilities than “lay sisters,” who shouldered domestic responsibilities and manual work. Finally, the congregation would have a mother general who would visit all secondary houses and be accessible to all sisters. Although the bishop of Amiens initially approved this rule, Julie’s leadership as mother general eventually became a source of conflict between the two religious leaders. Murphy, Julie Billiart, 66. Murphy. Others include Madeleine Sophie Barat’s Ladies of the Sacred Heart, MarieMadeleine Postel’s Sisters of Christian Schools of Mercy in France, Karolina Gerhardinger’s School Sisters of Notre Dame in Germany, and Catherine McAuley’s Sisters of Mercy in Ireland. Of the approximately 1,250 congregations founded in the nineteenth century, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur were among the few to expand outside their regions of origin. Joachim Schmiedl, “Religious Orders as Transnational Networks of the Catholic Church,” Institute of European History (IEG), accessed October 2, 2011, http://www.ieg-ego.eu/schmiedlj-2011-en. One of Mo. Saint-Joseph’s greatest accomplishments was completing the rule for the institute, which was developed from the provisional rule that had been used for the past fifteen years. Julie had consulted the rules of St.  Benedict, St.  Augustine, St. Ignatius, Sr. Mary Ward, and St. Jeanne de Lestonnac as she worked to pre-

Notes to Pages 30–32 / 239

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

pare a rule but had little time to write during her constant travels. Louanna Orth, “Notes for Meeting of the Cincinnati Province” (Cincinnati: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Ohio Province Archive, 2014). Mo. Saint-Joseph compiled Julie’s research in writing the official rule, which was approved in 1818 and received papal approval in 1845. Murphy, Julie Billiart. Mary Agnes McCann, “Religious Orders of Women of the United States,” Catholic Historical Review 7, no. 3 (1921): 316–31. Louanna Orth, Notre Dame in the New World: A Vision Realized: The Study of Nineteenth Century America and Its Reality for the First Sisters of Notre Dame in America (Cincinnati: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Ohio Province, 1989). Orth, “Notes for Meeting.” Orth, Notre Dame in New World. Carol Coburn, “Uneasy Alliance: A Look Back at American Sisters and Clerical Authority,” Global Sisters Report, 2015, accessed September 10, 2015, http:// globalsistersreport.org/column/trends/uneasy-alliance-look-back-american-sisters -and-clerical-authority-27881. Joseph B. Code, “A Selected Bibliography of the Religious Orders and Congregations of Women: Founded within the Present Boundaries of the United States (1727– 1850),” Catholic Historical Review 26, no. 2 (1940): 222–45. Fr. Van Hencxthoven, quoted in Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 16. Marie-Angèle Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch of Notre Dame: 1959–2009 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2009). The Propaganda Fide is the department of the Holy See dedicated to organizing all missionary activities of the church. Founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, it has been called the “Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples” since 1988. Vatican, “Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples,” accessed March 9, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/roman _curia/ congregations/ cevang/ documents/ rc _con _cevang _20100524 _profile _en .html. Male missionaries, in contrast, evangelized the African continent for centuries, arriving to the Congo region as the first wave of Portuguese imperialism was sweeping the globe. Catholic priests from Portugal settled in the Kingdom of Kongo as early as 1491, not even a decade after Portuguese explorers set foot in the area, and upon their arrival, they began to build churches and mission schools. The Kingdom of Kongo was an imperial federation of two to three million people that had existed for at least one hundred years. With the arrival of the Portuguese and their subsequent colonization of Brazil in 1500, Kongo was engulfed by the Atlantic slave trade. By 1530, over five thousand enslaved Africans were being shipped each year from Kongo’s coastal port across the Atlantic. In 1526, King Nzingo Mbembe Affonso of Kongo, a convert to Christianity, appealed to King João II of Portugal, explaining that slave traders were kidnapping his people and depopulating the kingdom. In his letter, he asked that the Portuguese send only priests, schoolteachers, and wine and flour for mass. When the Portuguese king was unresponsive, Affonso attempted to appeal directly to the Vatican, but his emissaries were detained as soon as they stepped off the ship in Lisbon. By the end of the sixteenth century, the British, French, and Dutch joined the Portuguese in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Despite the thriving market for human cargo, few traders ventured far from the

240 / Notes to Pages 32–40

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

coast because the fierce rapids of the Congo River stopped those who attempted to sail further. Some Capuchin missionaries reached the top of the rapids, but Europeans knew little about the interior of central Africa or the source of the river at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Phyllis Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville: Mothers and Sisters in Troubled Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Susan Smith, “Catholic Women in Mission 1910–2010,” in A Century of Catholic Mission: Roman Catholic Missiology 1910 to the Present, ed. Stephan B. Bevans (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015), 83–91. J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 124. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!; and Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost; and Erik Young, “Scramble for Africa,” in Encyclopedia of Africa, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Marvin D. Markowitz, “The Missions and Political Development in the Congo,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 40, no. 3 (1970): 234–47. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. Young, “Scramble for Africa.” Markowitz, “Missions and Political Development.” Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. Kitewo. Kitewo. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. Hochschild. Mark Twain wrote King Leopold’s Soliloquy in 1905, and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Crime of Congo in 1909. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. Hochschild. See Guardian, “The Hidden Holocaust,” May 12, 1999, accessed March 9, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22; and Andrew Osborn, “Belgium Confronts Its Colonial Demons,” Guardian, July 18, 2002, accessed March 9, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/18/congo .andrewosborn. Thomas Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth, and Reality (London: Zed Books, 2007). Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Markowitz, “Missions and Political Development.” Markowitz. Markowitz. Kim Dalgarn and Anne Stevenson, “Mission in America (1840–2015),” in Good Works: Worldwide Mission of the Sisters of Notre Dame 10, no. 3 (March 2015): 4–7, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.sndden.org/assets/Good-Works/GWMarch2015 .pdf. Orth, “Notes for Meeting.” Fund-raising efforts for St. Anne were often framed as a missionary endeavor. In the words of Rev. Edward Purcell, Bishop Purcell’s brother and editor of an archdioce-

Notes to Pages 40–43 / 241

52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

san newspaper in Cincinnati, “Catholic missionaries labor in the most distant parts of the globe, at the peril of their lives, to extend the blessings of our holy religion to every human being, without distinction of color or race, and therefore we should not forget how much remains to be done in this same direction here in our midst.” Joseph Lackner, “St. Ann’s Colored Church and School, Cincinnati, the Indian and Negro Collection for the United States, and Reverend Francis Xavier Weninger, S.J.,” in “The Black Catholic Community, 1880–1987,” U.S. Catholic Historian 7, no. 2/3 (1988): 148. Shannen Dee Williams, “Forgotten Habits, Lost Vocations: Black Nuns, Contested Memories, and the 19th Century Struggle to Desegregate U.S. Catholic Religious Life,” Journal of African America History 101, no. 3 (2016): 231–60; and Oblate Sisters of Providence, “History,” accessed February 22, 2109, http://oblatesisters.com/our -history. Williams, “Forgotten Habits,” 234. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!; and Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville. Pope Benedict XV, Maximum Illud [On the Propagation of the Faith throughout the World], November 30, 1919, accessed March 1, 2018, http://www.svdcuria.org/ public/mission/docs/encycl/mi-en.htm. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch, 25. Kitewo. Kitewo. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!, 82, 25. Kongo and Kongolese are used here to refer to a region and ethnic group in the Lower Congo that predate the colony and nation-state established after Belgian rule, crossing the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, and Angola. The Kongo people belong to the Bantu ethnic group of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. Londi Boka di Mpasi, “La religieuse, vedette de l’Eglise et de l’africanité moderne,” Telema 6, no. 1 (1980): 40. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. During this period, the Sisters of Notre Dame and the Society of Jesus abandoned the Wombali mission because of poor health conditions in the area. At Djuma and Beno, the missions were left in the care of other congregations once established. The missions in Kisantu and Lemfu developed in very similar ways over time, maintaining a focus on teaching, providing health services, and offering religious instruction. By 1930, sisters in Kisantu were teaching almost three hundred students in their primary classes and home-economics program. This number doubled over the next five years. In 1936, Sr.  Marie Billiart founded a normal school in Lemfu to train girls with three-year postprimary diplomas to become teachers. The school attracted young women from five other missions and was very successful, graduating fortythree students in its first seven years. The following year, the Lemfu mission founded a dispensary hospital that still operates today. As the Sisters of Notre Dame continued to develop their education and health programs, they also translated Belgian teaching manuals on the natural sciences, teaching, and home economics. Others wrote small books for religious instruction and songs in local languages set to the tune of Belgian Catholic action songs. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. An école normale, or “normal school,” refers to a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!, 26.

242 / Notes to Pages 43–45 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

Burke, 24. Markowitz, “Missions and Political Development.” Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Markowitz. Markowitz. Markowitz. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!, 40. Burke, 27. Markowitz, “Missions and Political Development.” Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (London: Zed Books, 2002). Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas!, 28. Burke, 29. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch, 33. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch, 48. Kitewo. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Renée Fox, In the Belgian Château: The Spirit and Culture of a European Society in an Age of Change (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1994), 225. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. Kitewo, 35. Stephen R. Weissman, “What Really Happened in Congo: The CIA, the Murder of Lumumba, and the Rise of Mobutu,” Foreign Affairs, July–August 2014, accessed February 5, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/democratic-republic-congo/ 2014-06-16/what-really-happened-congo. Recently declassified evidence shows that the CIA was engaged in extensive paramilitary action in Congo between 1960 and 1968, spending an estimated $90– 150 million in the region to support US interests. Although the CIA station chief in Congo, Lawrence Devlin, failed to inform his superiors in Washington, he was both involved in and aware of the events that led up to the transfer of Lumumba to Katanga. Weissman, “What Really Happened in Congo.” Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Burke, 30. Burke, 30. Burke. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. Kitewo, 37. Kitewo. Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. Patrick M. Boyle, “Beyond Self-Protection to Prophecy: The Catholic Church and Political Change in Zaire,” Africa Today 39, no. 3 (1992): 49–66. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “What Mobutu Did Right,” Foreign Policy, May 9, 2014, accessed February 21, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/09/what-mobutu-did -right/. The changing leadership structure triggered another Belgian exodus from Zaire. Some Belgian sisters who were not prepared to obey a black superior returned to

Notes to Pages 56–66 / 243 their home country for good. Provincial Elizabeth Marie Mbwanga was beloved among local sisters during her tenure but left the order after her leadership mandate ended. While on sabbatical in Jerusalem, Mbwanga decided to join a monastic order, the Benedictines of Abu Gosh. Sisters of Notre Dame have interpreted her departure in different ways. Some Congolese and American sisters believe she had always been called to contemplative life but did not have the opportunity to pursue this type of vocation in Congo (Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch). Others speculate she left because of the trials she endured as the first black provincial in Congo. 100. Lou F. McNeil, Recovering American Catholic Inculturation: John England’s Jacksonian Populism and Romanticist Adaptation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 5. CHAPTER THREE

1.

At the time of my fieldwork, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur had eighteen provinces, including two located in the greater Boston area with a combined 315  members. I interviewed members of both the Boston and Ipswich provinces because of their shared regional history and because members of these provinces sometimes work at the same ministry sites or live together in the same communities. The Democratic Republic of Congo had one province, the Congo-Kinshasa Province, with approximately 120 members. In September 2014, more than a year after I finished data collection, five provinces in the United States—Boston, Ipswich, Connecticut, California, and Baltimore / Washington, DC—joined together to form the new East-West Province. 2. Marie Augusta Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition: From the 1960s to the 1980s (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984), 42. 3. Mary Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); and Lora Anne Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). 4. Elizabeth K. Briody and Teresa A. Sullivan, “Sisters at Work: Career and Community Changes,” Work and Occupations 15, no. 3 (1988): 313–33. 5. Briody and Sullivan. 6. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival,” Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45. See also Roger Finke, “An Orderly Return to Tradition: Explaining Membership Recruitment to Catholic Religious Orders,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 2 (1997): 218–30. 7. Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition. 8. Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001). 9. Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Constitutions of 1989 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 1989), 12–13. 10. Peter Phan, “Vatican II: Renewal, Accommodation, Inculturation,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity, ed. Lamin Sanneh and Michael J. McClymond (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 234. 11. Pope Paul VI, Sacrosanctum Concilium [The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy], December 4, 1963, chap. 1, sec. 36, 2, Vatican website, accessed April 3, 2018, http:// www.vatican .va/ archive/ hist _councils/ ii _vatican _council/ documents/ vatii _const _19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html. 12. Sacrosanctum Concilium continues, “Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to

244 / Notes to Pages 66–67

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.” Pope Paul VI, chap. 1, sec. 36, 2. Phan, “Vatican II.” Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes [The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World], December 7, 1965, 44, Vatican website, accessed April 3, 2018, http:// www.vatican .va/ archive/ hist _councils/ ii _vatican _council/ documents/ vat -ii _cons _19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. See Leo XIII, Orientalium Dignitas [On the Churches of the East], November 20, 1894, Papal Encyclicals Online, accessed May 28, 2018, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/ leo13/l13orient.htm; and Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus [On the Unity of Human Society], October 20, 1939, Vatican website, accessed May 28, 2018, http:// w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939 _summi-pontificatus.html, Evangelii Praecones [On Promotion of Catholic Missions], June 2, 1951, Vatican website, accessed May 28, 2018, http://w2.vatican.va/content/ pius -xii/ en/ encyclicals/ documents/ hf _p -xii _enc _02061951 _evangelii -praecones .html, and Fidei Donum [On the Present Condition of Catholic Missions, Especially in Africa], April 21, 1957, Vatican website, accessed May 28, 2018, http://w2.vatican.va/ content/ pius -xii/ en/ encyclicals/ documents/ hf _p -xii _enc _21041957 _fidei -donum .html. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Face of Catholic Transnationalism,” in Transnational Religion and Fading States, ed. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James P. Piscatori (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 104–18. The term inculturation entered circulation among Catholic missiologists in the 1950s, heavily influenced by the older anthropological concept of “acculturation” to describe an individual’s encounter with different cultures. Phan, “Vatican II.” Quoted in Lou F. McNeil, Recovering American Catholic Inculturation: John England’s Jacksonian Populism and Romanticist Adaptation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 5. Quoted in Phan, 235. Marie-Angèle Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch of Notre Dame: 1959–2009 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2009). In 1958, a Belgian missionary named Fr. Guido Haazen worked with the Baluba people of Kasai and Kasanga (Belgian Congo) to set the Latin mass to traditional music of the region: the Missa Luba. Nathan Peter Chase, “A History and Analysis of the Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaire,” Obsculta 6, no. 1 (2013): 28–36, accessed April 3, 2018, https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/obsculta/vol6/iss1/14/. Nwaka Chris Egbulem, “Mission and Inculturation: Africa,” in Oxford History of Christian Worship, ed. Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen Beth Westerfield Tucker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 688. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Egbulem, “Mission and Inculturation”; and Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, Introduction to Christian Worship: An African Orientation (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 1997). Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! Now known as ASUMA.

Notes to Pages 69–90 / 245 26. These percentages are approximate and do not include the almost thirty sisters who live either out of state or outside the country. Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Directory 2011–2012 Combined Boston and Ipswich Provinces (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2012). 27. See Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Babyboomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 28. These include the vows of the first Sisters of Notre Dame (February 2), the death of Julie Billiart (April 8), the official liturgical feast day of St. Julie (May 13), the day of her canonization (June 22), and Julie’s birth and baptismal day (July 12). Sisters of Notre Dame, Constitutions of 1989. 29. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! 30. This retreat is modeled on the thirty-day silent retreat elaborated in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and required of all men who take vows as Jesuits. 31. Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912; repr., New York: Free Press, 1965). 32. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! 33. Burke. 34. Sisters of Notre Dame, Constitutions of 1989, 24. 35. This program is offered every three years and open to Sisters of Notre Dame who either are preparing to make final vows or have made them recently. 36. The first Sisters of Notre Dame in Kenya were American and arrived in Nairobi in 1965. According to the American sisters I interviewed, they brought with them a very different sense of mission and the place of missionaries than Belgian sisters brought to Congo in 1894, encouraging the expression of local customs and culture from the beginning. 37. Burke, These Sisters Are All Mamas! 38. Helen Rose Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Amy L. Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); and Sarah McFarland Taylor, Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 39. Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful. CHAPTER FOUR

1.

2.

3.

4.

The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur opened Emmanuel College in 1919 as the first Catholic college for women in New England. In 2001, it became a coeducational institution. Ngeba was formerly part of the Bas-Congo territorial province. During my fieldwork in 2012, there were eleven such provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As part of a decentralization plan laid out in the 2006 constitution, but not fully implemented until 2015, these eleven provinces have been divided into twenty-six provinces. See figure 1.2 for a map of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner argue that clergy and members of religious orders are a high-status group within the country, although they do not fit neatly into social-class categories. See Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). Mary Johnson, Patricia Wittberg, and Mary L. Gautier, New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

246 / Notes to Pages 90–92 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

Shannen Dee Williams, “‘You Could Do the Irish Jig, but Anything African Was Taboo’: Black Nuns, Contested Memories, and the 20th Century Struggle to Desegregate U.S. Catholic Religious Life,” Journal of African American History 102, no. 2 (2017): 125–56. Shannen Dee Williams, “Black Nuns and the Struggle to Desegregate Catholic America after World War I” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2013). This was the case for the Cincinnati Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, which voted to accept its first black postulants, Saundra Ann Willingham and Violet Marie Dennis, in 1960. The two women defected from the congregation in 1968 and 1970, respectively. Leaving the order weeks before the first National Black Sisters’ Conference convened, Willingham stated publicly, “White religious women make it well-nigh impossible for Black religious women to exist as integral human beings in white orders. . . . They do this on a number of counts and on several levels, but they make it impossible mainly by refusing to let the Black woman be black.” Williams, “Black Nuns,” 254. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier, New Generations, 19. The retention rate across all religious institutes is 50 percent. Mary E. Bendyna and Mary L. Gautier, Recent Vocations to Religious Life: A Report for the National Religious Vocation Conference (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2009). In 2009, 58 percent in formation were white, 21 percent Hispanic/Latina, 14 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, and 6 percent Black/African American. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier, New Generations. Marie Augusta Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition: From the 1960s to the 1980s (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984). See Helen Rose Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (Albany: State University of New York, 1994); Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival,” Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45; and Laurence R. Iannaccone, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 5 (1994): 1180–211. Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister; and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “The Growth and Decline of Religious Orders Worldwide: The Impact of Women’s Opportunity Structures,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32, no. 1 (1993): 68–75. Ebaugh; and Wittberg, Rise and Decline. Ebaugh, “Growth and Decline.” Stark and Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations.” Stark and Finke. Stark and Finke. Stark and Finke, 134. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier, New Generations. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier. Johnson, Wittberg, and Gautier; Wittberg, Rise and Decline; and William V. D’Antonio, Michele Dillon, and Mary L. Gautier, American Catholics in Transition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). Mary L. Gautier and Melissa Cidade, Educational Debt and Vocations to Religious Life: A Report for the National Religious Vocation Conference (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2012).

Notes to Pages 92–114 / 247 23. Gautier and Cidade, Educational Debt and Vocations. 24. Gautier and Cidade. 25. Mary Johnson, Mary L. Gautier, Patricia Wittberg, and Thu T. Do, “Trinity Washington University/CARA Study: International Sisters in the United States” (presented at International Union Superiors General headquarters in Rome, Italy, on May 4, 2017), UISG website, accessed April 5, 2018, http://www.internationalunionsuperiorsgeneral .org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/05/international-sisters-study.pdf. 26. Ebaugh, “Growth and Decline.” 27. Ebaugh, “Growth and Decline”; Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister; and Stark and Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations.” 28. All canonical religious orders have a religious rule, or plan of life and discipline, to govern their practices, which must be approved by the Vatican. 29. Sr. Gail explained to me, “Actually, people really identify themselves in the parishes that they grew up in. . . . If you talk to the sisters when they are all together, [they will ask] ‘Where’d you come from?’ ‘I came from St. Gregory’s in Dorchester,’ or, ‘I came from St. Mary’s in Beverly.’ They identify themselves by the parishes that they grew up in heavily in the Boston area. Less so in the North Shore, but you can identify yourself coming from a certain parish and automatically you get a characteristic because of that parish.” 30. Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister. 31. Wittberg, Rise and Decline; and Helen Rose Ebaugh, Out of the Cloister: A Study of Organizational Dilemmas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). 32. Pew Research Center, “Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project: Democratic Republic of Congo,” accessed September 4, 2019, http://www.globalreligiousfutures .org/ countries/ democratic -republic -of -the -congo #/ ?affiliations _religion _id = 26 & affiliations_year=2010®ion_name=All%20Countries&restrictions_year=2016. 33. Pew Research Center; and Bibiana M. Ngundo and Jonathon Wiggins, Special Report: Women Religious in Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2017). 34. Marie-Angèle Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch of Notre Dame: 1959–2009 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2009). 35. During my fieldwork in 2012, there were eleven territorial provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As part of a decentralization plan laid out in the 2006 Constitution but not fully implemented until 2015, these eleven provinces have been divided into twenty-six provinces (see figure 1.2). 36. Michal Pagis, “Religious Self Constitution: A Relational Perspective,” in Religion on the Edge: De-centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion, ed. Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt, and David Smilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 92–114. 37. Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 82, 25. 38. Cameron L. Macdonald, “Manufacturing Motherhood: The Shadow Work of Nannies and Au Pairs,” Qualitative Sociology 21, no. 1 (1998), 27. See also Dorothy E. Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 9, no. 1 (1997): 51–80. 39. Casey Clevenger, “Constructing Spiritual Motherhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Gender and Society, forthcoming. Published ahead of print September 9, 2019. DOI: 10.1177/0891243219872464. 40. Danielle Czarnecki, “Moral Women, Immoral Technologies: How Devout Women

248 / Notes to Pages 114–125 Negotiate Gender, Religion, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” Gender & Society 29, no. 5 (2015): 716–42. 41. Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem [On the Dignity and Vocation of Women on the Occasion of the Marian Year], August 15, 1988, sec. 21, Vatican website, accessed April 5, 2018, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/ documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html. 42. Pagis, “Religious Self Constitution.” CHAPTER FIVE

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Constitutions of 1989 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 1989), 21. Sr. Joyce Meyer, interview with author, May 1, 2018. Elizabeth K. Briody and Teresa A. Sullivan, “Sisters at Work: Career and Community Changes,” Work and Occupations 15, no. 3 (1988): 313–33. Briody and Sullivan, 315. Marie Augusta Neal, From Nuns to Sisters: An Expanding Vocation (Mystic, CT: TwentyThird, 1990). Neal, 59. Lora Anne Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 12. Amy L. Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Quiñonez and Turner, Transformation of American Catholic Sisters. Mary Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). Marie Augusta Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition: From the 1960s to the 1980s (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984). Briody and Sullivan, “Sisters at Work”; and Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition, 24–27. See Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition; Helen Rose Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (Albany: State University of New York,1994); Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, “Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival,” Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45; and Laurence R. Iannaccone, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 5 (1994): 1180–211. Helen Rose Ebaugh, Jon Lorence, and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, “The Growth and Decline of the Population of Catholic Nuns Cross-nationally, 1960–1990: A Case of Secularization as Social Structural Change,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35, no. 1 (1996): 171–83; Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister; Helen Rose Ebaugh, “The Growth and Decline of Religious Orders Worldwide: The Impact of Women’s Opportunity Structures,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32, no. 1 (1993b): 68–75; and Helen Rose Ebaugh, Out of the Cloister: A Study of Organizational Dilemmas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Burke. Marie-Angèle Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch of Notre Dame: 1959–2009 (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2009).

Notes to Pages 125–149 / 249 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

Literally, a “normal school.” Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. Kitewo, 64. Originally derived from the Greek word meaning “favor of God,” charism is believed to be an expression first used by St. Paul in the New Testament and appears only in the Pauline corpus. See Daniel T. Dorsey, “Reverend William Howard Bishop: Toward an Understanding of His Charism as Founder of the Glenmary Home Missioners” (master’s thesis, Pontifical Gregorian University, 1983), accessed February 6, 2015, http://www.glenmary.org/site/epage/97264_919.htm, particularly the chapter titled “The Theological Concept of the Charism of a Founder.” Paul’s understanding of charism has been interpreted as “the free gifts given by God which are usually spiritual gifts” or a “free gift appropriated by one person or another which allows him to accomplish through the Spirit activities suited to the community’s good.” Xavier Leon-DuFour, “Charism,” in Dictionary of the New Testament (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), quoted in Dorsey. Pope Paul VI and those after have drawn on this latter definition, according to which the charism of a founder is a more particularized gift bestowed for a specific intent in the church and in humanity. According to this theology, the spirit of the founder is transmitted through his or her writings, personality, and faith-vision, becoming a collective reality and “basis for unity and continuity in the history of the community . . . understood only through experience.” Dorsey. Pope Paul VI, Evangelica Testificatio [Evangelical Witness: On the Renewal of the Religious Life according to the Teaching of the Second Vatican Council], July 29, 1971, article 11, Vatican website, accessed April 11, 2018, http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/ en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19710629_evangelica-testificatio .html. Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, “Who We Are: Our Mission,” accessed August 29, 2018, https://www.sndden.org/who-we-are/our-mission/. Provinces in the Northern Hemisphere continue to provide support for those in the Southern Hemisphere through an endowment called the Jubilee Fund that was established in 1990. This fund is administered through the Congregational Mission Office (formerly the International Office for Africa and Latin America), which is located in Ipswich and consists primarily of money generated from the fundraising efforts and investments of American sisters. In 2006, the African and South American leadership of the congregation began to gather annually to determine how these funds would be distributed. With greater access to education and higher salaries, Congolese sisters can now invest Jubilee funds into opportunities for training, professional development, and infrastructure projects rather than providing for everyday necessities. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. David Featherstone, Richard Phillips, and Johanna Waters, “Introduction: Spatialities of Transnational Networks,” Global Networks 7, no. 4 (2007): 385. Neal, From Nuns to Sisters. CHAPTER SIX

1. 2. 3.

Mary Linscott, The Quiet Revolution (Glasgow: Burns and Oats, 1966), 76. Linscott, 76. The first six Sisters of Notre Dame to reach the Western frontier departed directly from Antwerp, Belgium, in 1844 at the request of Jesuit missionary Fr. De Smet.

250 / Notes to Pages 149–151

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

Arriving in the Willamette Valley in August, the Sisters of Notre Dame were the first Catholic sisters in the Pacific Northwest and their experience was very different from their counterparts in Ohio. See Rebecca McClelland Poet, “Women of Valor: The Sisters of Notre Dame, St. Paul, Oregon 1844–1852” (master thesis, Oregon State University, 1996). Mary Rita Grady, “Journeying Together: Congregations of Women and Men Religious in the Archdiocese of Boston 1808–2008” (Boston: Office of the Delegate for Religious, Archdiocese of Boston, 2008), accessed January 5, 2015, http:// www.bostoncatholic.org/uploadedFiles/BostonCatholicorg/Offices_And_Services/ Offices/Sub_Pages/Vocations/Journeying_Together.pdf. Louanna Orth, “Notes for Meeting of the Cincinnati Province” (Cincinnati: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Ohio Province Archive, 2014). Grady, “Journeying Together.” Department of the Interior, “Catholic Parochial Schools in Eastern Massachusetts,” in Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1900–1901, vol. 2. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1902): 2470–72; and Grady, “Journeying Together.” Department of the Interior, “Catholic Parochial Schools,” 2471. Nancy Barthelemy, “The Seeds of Growth: The Sisters of Notre Dame in Massachusetts, 1849–1973,” in Annals from the Archives (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2014), accessed October 1, 2015, https://sndnewengland.files.wordpress .com/2014/09/annals-from-the-archives-september-2014.pdf. Nancy Barthelemy, “The Sisters of Notre Dame in Salem,” in Annals from the Archives (Ipswich, MA: Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 2013), accessed October 1, 2015, https:// sndnewengland .files .wordpress .com/ 2014/ 03/ annals -from -the -archives -september-2013.pdf; and Orth, “Notes for Meeting.” Kevin Kenny, Irish Immigrants in the United States, US Embassy, 2008, accessed January 5, 2015, http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2008/03/20080 307131416ebyessedo0.6800043.html#axzz3UwjCXiQf. Kenny. E. H. Derby, Commercial Metropolis in 1850: Her Growth, Population, Wealth (Boston: Redding, 1850); and Orth, “Notes for Meeting.” Grady, “Journeying Together.” Nancy Barthelemy, “The Nunnery Committee in Lowell 1854–1855,” in Annals from the Archives, accessed October 1, 2015, https://sndnewengland.files.wordpress.com/ 2014/06/annals-from-the-archives-june-2014.pdf. Mary Oates, “‘Lowell’: An Account of Convent Life in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1852– 1890,” New England Quarterly 61, no. 1 (1888): 101–18; and Barthelemy, “Nunnery Committee.” Barthelemy, “Seeds of Growth.” Orth, “Notes for Meeting.” Kathleen Sprows Cummings, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Scholars generally attribute this “greening” of religious life to high rates of nonmarriage and strong social support for religious vocations in Irish American communities. Cummings, New Women of Old Faith, 66. Under Sr. Julia McGroarty’s strong leadership, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

Notes to Pages 152–160 / 251

22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

founded Trinity College in 1901 as the first Catholic women’s college not established from an existing academy. (The School Sisters of Notre Dame, no connection to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, opened the first college for Catholic women in 1895 by expanding the curriculum of their girls’ academy to include college-level study.) A gifted administrator and keen observer of contemporary developments in education, Sr.  Julia began her tenure by implementing a standardized education curriculum in Notre Dame schools across the country, She also anticipated the need for sisters to obtain state teaching diplomas and recognized that middle-class American Catholic girls would need access to college education in order to compete with their peers for professional occupations. With these regional interests in mind, Sr. Julia began to explore the possibility of founding a women’s college in Washington, DC. Cummings, New Women of Old Faith. From the beginning of the endeavor, Sr.  Julia and the local superior in Washington, DC, focused on founding an institution that would be equal to its best non-Catholic counterparts in the United States, where women would be taught “as pupils” rather than children. As Kathleen Sprows Cummings describes in New Women of the Old Faith, Sr.  Julia was pulled between her loyalty to Superior General Mo. Aimée de Jesus Dullaert in Namur and the expectations of the clergy and laypeople who supported the founding of Trinity College (now Trinity University). Sr. Julia herself assured local collaborators who were suspicious of interference from Namur that the American sisters were free from European influence and that the college would remain under the supervision of her office. At the same time, she had deep personal ties to Namur and close friendship with Mo. Aimée, traveling to the motherhouse seven times between 1868 and 1888. Sr.  Julia’s bold efforts to expand higher education for Catholic women in the United States during the 1890s signaled a changing relationship between different branches of the congregation. Unlike in the past, American Sisters of Notre Dame acted in their own regional interest and navigated the politics of the American Catholic hierarchy without deferring to Namur. The successful founding of Trinity under Sr. Julia’s leadership increased the reputation and authority of Sisters of Notre Dame in the United States and represented the growing independence of the American leadership. Eight years after the death of Julia McGroarty, Mo. Marie Aloyse became the first mother general of the congregation to visit the United States, traveling through the West before she arrived in Boston in 1910. Her visit foreshadowed the rising influence of American Sisters of Notre Dame within the wider congregation. Mary Oates, “The Development of Catholic Colleges for Women, 1895–1960,” U.S. Catholic Historian 7, no. 4 (1988): 413–28; and Cummings, New Women of Old Faith. Miriam of Infant Jesus, The Finger of God: History of the Massachusetts Province of Notre Dame de Namur, 1849–1963 (Boston: Mission Church Press, 1963). Established in 1919, Emmanuel College was the first Catholic college for women in New England. Erick Berrelleza, Mary L. Gautier, and Mark M. Gray, “Population Trends among Religious Institutes of Women” (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2014), accessed April 3, 2018, https://cara.georgetown.edu/Women Religious.pdf. Miriam of the Infant Jesus, 18. Julie’s Family Learning Program, “Children’s Services,” accessed August 24, 2019, https://www.juliesfamily.org/programs/childrens-services/.

252 / Notes to Pages 163–188 27. Christo Rey Jesuit High School, “History,” accessed May 4, 2018, https://www .cristorey.net/about-us/our-history. 28. In 2012, there were twenty-five Cristo-Rey schools around the country. CHAPTER SEVEN

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

World Bank, “Democratic Republic of Congo: Overview,” accessed May 28, 2018, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/drc/overview. United Nations Development Programme, “Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone” (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2016), accessed May 28, 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016 _human_development_report.pdf. Robert Rotberg, Africa Emerges: Consummate Challenges, Abundant Opportunities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). Robert Rotberg. World Factbook, “Democratic Republic of Congo,” CIA, accessed May 29, 2018, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html. Kristof Titeca, Tom De Herdt, and Inge Wagemakers, “God and Caesar in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Negotiating Church-State Relations through the Management of School Fees in Kinshasa’s Catholic Schools,” Review of African Political Economy 40, no. 135 (2013): 116–31. Paul Gifford, “Some Recent Developments in African Christianity,” African Affairs 93, no. 373 (1994): 513–34; Titeca, “God and Caesar,” 117; and Paul Gifford, Christianity, Development, and Modernity in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 85. Titeca. Titeca, 120. Titeca, 120–22. Titeca, 117–18. Gifford, Christianity, Development, and Modernity, 151. Gifford, 91. Gifford, 151, 103, 97. Scherz, Having People, Having Heart, 10. Scherz, 71. Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch, 67. Joan F. Burke, These Catholic Sisters Are All Mamas! Towards the Inculturation of the Sisterhood in Africa: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2001). World Bank, Democratic Republic of Congo Urbanization Review: Productive and Inclusive Cities for an Emerging Democratic Republic of Congo (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2015). Kitewo, Flowering of the Congolese Branch. World Bank, Jobs Diagnostic: The Democratic Republic of Congo (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017). Jane Freedman, “Explaining Sexual Violence and Gender Inequalities in the DRC,” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 23, no. 2 (2011): 170–75. Soeurs de Notre-Dame de Namur Congo/Kinshasa, “Education,” accessed May 26, 2018, http://www.snddencongokin.org/Education.html. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “A Crisis in the Congo,” Foreign Policy, December 14, 2011, accessed May 1, 2018, http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/12/14/a-crisis-in-the-congo/.

Notes to Pages 188–195 / 253 25. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Background on the Democratic Republic of Congo,” accessed September 30, 2018, http://www.usccb.org/issues-and -action/ human -life -and -dignity/ global -issues/ africa/ democratic -republic -of -the -congo/backgrounder-on-democratic-republic-of-the-congo.cfm. 26. Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Patriarchal Bargains and Latent Avenues of Social Mobility: Nuns in the Roman Catholic Church,” Gender & Society 7, no. 3 (1993): 400–414. 27. These women brought up the example of American Sister of Notre Dame Dorothy Stang, who was assassinated in Brazil for her environmental activism. They were also cognizant of criticism American sisters have faced from the Vatican for taking public positions that contradict American bishops. 28. Although the country’s 2006 constitution articulates a formal dedication to equality between men and women, committing the state to eliminating “all forms of discrimination against women,” there has been little progress in implementing these principles. After the 2011 presidential election, women made up only 8.6 percent of membership in the National Assembly and 4.5 percent in the Senate, with even lower representation in provincial parliaments. Inadequate infrastructure, a lack of political will, the failure of political parties to adopt parity policies, and low overall levels of politicization among Congolese women all contributed to these disparities. Freedman, “Explaining Sexual Violence”; and Ndeye Sow, “Women’s Political Participation and Economic Empowerment in Post-conflict Countries: Lessons from the Great Lakes Region in Africa,” International Alert, July 2012, accessed January 20, 2018, http://www.internationalalert.org/sites/default/files/publications/ 201209WomenEmpowermentEN_0.pdf. 29. Peggy Levitt and Sally Merry, “Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global Women’s Rights in Peru, China, India, and the United States,” Global Networks 9, no. 4 (2009), 441–61. 30. Levitt and Merry, 443. 31. Center for Religion and Civic Culture, “Catholic Sisters Discuss Sustainable Development in Africa at Nairobi Convening,” accessed May 31, 2018, https://crcc .usc .edu/ catholic - sisters - discuss - sustainable - development - in - africa - at - nairobi -convening/. 32. Titeca, “God and Caesar,” 116. CONCLUSION

1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

Laurie Goodstein, “Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes” New York Times, April 18, 2012, accessed May 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html. Network, a lobby for Catholic social justice headed by executive director Sr. Simone Campbell, wrote the statement of support for health care reform that angered American bishops. Sr. Campbell also led the “Nuns on the Bus” tours to highlight social justice issues and was a speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Goodstein, “Vatican Reprimands U.S. Nuns.” Ann Braude, Transforming the Faith of Our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Mary Katzenstein, Fearless and Faithful: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 137. Pew Research Center, “7 Facts about American Catholics,” accessed October 1, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/04/7-facts-about-american

254 / Notes to Pages 195–206

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

-catholics/; and Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” accessed October 1, 2018, http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing -religious-landscape/. Pew Research Center, “7 Facts.” See Michele Dillon, Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Elaine Howard Ecklund, “Catholic Women Negotiate Feminism: A Research Note,” Sociology of Religion 64, no. 4 (2003): 515– 24; Christel J. Manning, “Women in a Divided Church: Liberal and Conservative Catholic Women Negotiate Changing Gender Roles,” Sociology of Religion 58, no. 4 (1997): 375–90; and Miriam Therese Winter, Adair Lummis, and Allison Stokes, Defecting in Place: Women Claim Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives (New York: Crossroad, 1994). Center for Religion and Civic Culture, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative, “Sisters Serving the World: 2nd Annual Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning Report” (University of Southern California: Center for Religion and Civic Culture, 2017). Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Mary Johnson, “Vatican Report Gives Sisters and Whole Church Reason to Hope,” America Magazine: The Jesuit Review, December 16, 2014, accessed May 31, 2018, https:// www.americamagazine.org/ content/ all -things/ vatican -report -gives -sisters -and-whole-church-reason-hope. Sandra Schneiders, “Religious Life: The Dialectic between Marginality and Transformation,” Dominican Order of Preachers, accessed September 6, 2019, https:// opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/19/sandra-schneiders-religious-life-the-dialectic -between-marginality-and-transformation/. Center for Religion and Civic Culture, “Sisters Serving the World.” In addition to regularly welcoming Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur from around the world, the motherhouse has frequent groups from two other congregations that were inspirited by the life of Julie Billiart. In 1822, young Dutch girls learned about apostolic religious life in Ghent from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, returning to their country to found the Sisters of Notre Dame of Amerfoort. In 1850, German girls learned about religious life from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Amerfoort and founded the Sisters of Notre Dame of Coesfeld. Soeurs de Notre Dame de Namur Belgique Sud—France, “SND de Coesfeld à Namur,” accessed May 31, 2018, http://sndden.be/2018/05/07/snd-de-coesfeld-a-namur/. Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, “Europe,” accessed May 31, 2018, https://www .sndden.org/who-we-are/where-we-are/europe/. Peggy Levitt, “God, Ethnicity, and Country: An Approach to the Study of Transnational Religion” (paper presented at workshop on “Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives,” Princeton University, June 30–July 1, 2001), 6. Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Shiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004): 1011. Soeurs de Notre Dame de Namur Belgique Sud—France, “Soeurs congolaises à Thuin, Namur et Cuvilly,” accessed May 31, 2018, http://sndden.be/soeurs-congolaises-a -thuin-namur-et-cuvilly/.

Notes to Pages 210–224 / 255 APPENDIX

1.

2. 3.

Jacob K. Olupona, “Globalization and African Immigrant Religious Communities,” in Religion Global Culture: New Terrain in the Study of Religion and the Work of Charles H. Long, ed. Jennifer I. M. Reid (New York: Lexington Books, 2003) 83–96. Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2006). Charmaz.

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INDEX

References to figures are denoted by an italic “f” following the page number. actor-network theory, 10 affiliates. See candidates; postulants Affonso, Nzingo Mbembe, 239n25 Africa, increasing number of sisters in, 13–14, 13f African American parishes, 40 African Photovoltaic Project, 2, 5, 6, 12, 18, 176. See also photovoltaic system African prints, 7, 71, 232n5, 232n7 Afro-Creole Sisters of the Holy Family (SFF), 40 Aimée de Jesus, Mo. (Élodie Dullaert), 31– 32, 251n21 Alliance Bakongo (ABAKO), 44, 45 Amiens, France, 28, 29; bishop of, 33, 238n12; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in, 24, 199 apostolic visitation, 82, 192, 193, 197–98 Archdiocese of Boston, 8, 103, 149, 150, 195; parishes, 129, 131; SNDdeN and, 150, 154, 155, 157, 162, 170; suburbanization of the parochial school system of, 162. See also Cardinal Cushing Central High School: closing of Arrupe, Pedro, 66–67, 233n10 aspirants, 43, 198, 199, 234n21 authenticité (Zairianization) campaign, 7, 54, 56 Bakongo, 44, 222 Belgian colonies, sisters in, 45. See also specific colonies Belgian colonization, 57, 210; 1908 annexation, 39

Belgian Congo, 39, 232n7; Catholic Church’s privileged position within, 8; education in, 44, 173–74; the first Congolese vocations, 41–44; humanitarian situation in, 37; missions in, 39–40; national church hierarchy in, 44; preparing for independence, 45–52 Belgian exodus from Zaire, 242n99 Belgian missionaries from the Society of Jesus, 31–32 Bergoglio, Jorge Mario (Pope Francis), 197 Berlin Conference of 1884–85, 34 Billiart, Marie Rose “Julie,” 25–26, 29–30, 32, 50, 157–58, 162, 238n16; as an ancestor, 26, 201; background and early life, 25, 27–28; biography of, 27–28; characterizations of, 25, 26, 28, 102, 201; charism of, 169, 198; churches, 207; congregations inspirited by the life of, 254n14; “daughters of Julie,” 8, 26; death, 29; France and, 28, 207; leadership as mother, 238n12; love for and devotion to, 25; Mary Linscott and, 25; Mo. Saint-Joseph (Françoise Blin de Bourdon) and, 11, 24, 25, 28–30, 33, 238n16; as a model, 201; paralysis, 28, 29; pictures/images of, 24, 25; priests and, 29–30; recovery, 29; schools opened by, 166; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and, 11, 24–26, 28–30, 254n14; as “smiling saint,” 25, 102; statue of, 3, 4f; teaching about the spirituality of, 205; travels, 28, 29; visions, 24–25, 29, 30, 200. See also Julie

268 / Index Billiart, Marie Rose “Julie,” (continued) Renewal Program; Julie’s Family Learning Program; St. Julie Billiart Parish Bismarck, Otto von, 33–34 black sisters, 40–41, 45–48, 51, 137–38, 177, 181, 220–21, 242n99; in Cincinnati, 40, 246n7; defecting from religious life, 90; opposition to, 40, 52, 155; policies prohibiting admission of, 90; women of African descent in Catholic Church, 39–55 Blin de Bourdon, Françoise (Mo. SaintJoseph), 24, 28–29 Boston. See Archdiocese of Boston; Greater Boston; specific topics Boston Province Office of SNDdeN, 24, 130–31, 212, 214; finances, 131 Braine, Marie Louise Antoinette, 27 Buisseret, Auguste, 44 Burke, Joan F., 31–35, 235n34 called by God, 85–87, 89, 99, 101, 112, 118–20, 139, 191 calls to holiness, 91, 234n30 Campbell, Simone, 253n2 candidates, 90, 234n21. See also postulants canonical institutes, 231n1. See also religious institutes canonical visitation. See apostolic visitation Cardinal Cushing Central High School, 85, 160; closing of, 124, 154, 156, 157, 168; mission of, 155; reopening of, 154; sisters teaching at, 128, 154, 155; sisters who graduated, 154 Casement, Roger, 37 Catholic sisters. See sisters celibacy: stigma of, 42, 108; vow of, 43, 91, 99, 114, 201, 231n1. See also chastity Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 49, 242n87 Centre universitaire congolais Lovanium (CUCL), 43 charism, 166, 200, 233n9, 234n21; etymology of the term, 249n21; of Julie Billiart, 169, 198; meanings and uses of the term, 127–28, 233n9, 249n21; Pope Paul VI on charism of the founders of the communities, 128, 233n9, 249n21;

of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 11, 63, 169, 196, 199, 212 charity, 30, 168, 175, 235n34 chastity, vow of, 99, 177; accountability and, 126; severing cultural and ethnic lifelines, 111–13; Vatican II and, 91, 114, 126, 231n1. See also celibacy “choir sisters,” 238n12 Church of St. Mary in Kimwenza, 72f church–state relations in Democratic Republic of Congo, 173–76 Cincinnati, 30, 31, 40, 149–51 Cincinnati Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 152, 246n7. See also Cincinnati Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 28 Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), 101 clothing/dress, 6, 7, 54, 71, 74, 78, 101, 163, 206 collective effervescence, 71 collective identities, 10, 12, 71, 201. See also transnational identities collegiality, 64, 84, 128 Commission for Evangelization (COFE), 67 community life (among sisters): diverse forms of, 64–65; institutional explanations for development of, 78–83; understanding different forms of, 75– 83. See also collegiality; Irish Catholic communities Conard N. Hilton Fund for Sisters, 3, 15, 236n41 Congo Free State, 35; la trinité coloniale (“the colonial trinity”) in the, 35–39 Congo-Kinshasa Province, 56, 59, 65, 211, 212; agricultural projects, 126; annual gatherings in, 70–71, 84; birth of, 52– 55; and the celebration of sisterhood across provinces, 70–72, 74; cultural explanations for differences in, 76–78; decisions regarding ministry in, 121; evolution of, 205; evolution of ministries in, 125–26; finances, 18, 125, 126, 139, 142, 172, 176–83; living the vow of poverty in, 176–83 (see also Democratic Republic of Congo); pathways to religious life in, 107–14; rituals of every-

Index / 269 day life, 62–63, 68–70, 84; schools, education, and teaching in, 52, 109, 110, 119, 121, 125–26, 136, 138, 179, 182–83, 205; sisters in, 88–89, 109–11, 121, 210, 221, 222, 231n2, 243n1; vow of obedience, 135–42; women’s professions in, 121. See also Kinshasa; specific topics Congo Reform Association, 37–38 Congolese (branch of) Sisters of Notre Dame, 6–8. See also specific topics Congolese rite. See rite zaïrois Congregational Mission Office of SNDdeN, 1–3, 18, 21, 22, 249n24. See also International Office for Africa and Latin America congregations. See religious institutes Conrad, Joseph, 37 Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, 3, 15–17, 91, 236n39. See also Hilton Catholic Sisters Initiative Conrad N. Hilton Sisters Initiative, 197 Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 253n28; decentralization plan laid out in, 222, 245n2, 247n35 Constitutions of 1989, 65, 120 convert-outreach program, 40 corruption, government and political, 172, 173, 183, 187, 190 Cristo Rey schools, 163. See also Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence Cummings, Kathleen Sprows, 251n21 Cuvilly, 200, 206, 207; Julie Billiart in, 27–28 Cuvilly Arts and Earth Center, 3 D Street Housing Project, 129, 146–48, 156 de Gonzague, Louise, 149–50, 162 de la Croix, Marie-Julie, 45–46, 50 De Vos, Monsignor, 42 Democratic Republic of Congo, 190–91; church-state relations in, 173–76, 183; collecting school fees in, 182–83; education and school system, 173–74, 182–87; finances in, 174, 179–81; limitations of religious sisterhood in public life, 187–90; map of, 9f; provinces,

222. See also Congo-Kinshasa Province; Kimwenza Dennis, Violet Marie, 246n7 diocesan institutes, 12–13, 15, 40, 45, 231n1; vs. pontifical institutes, 33, 236n38 discernment, 120–21; from obedience to, 126–35 discernment process, 6–7, 142, 157 dispensaries, 125, 126, 179; sisters working in, 7, 52, 116, 125, 176, 181, 184 dispensary hospitals, 40 diversity among sisters, growing, 89–92 Djuma, 39, 42, 241n63 Dorchester, Massachusetts, 55, 97, 127, 131, 155, 214 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 38 dress. See clothing/dress Dullaert, Élodie (Mo. Aimée de Jesus), 31– 32, 251n21 Dulles, Allen, 49 Durkheim, Émile, 71 Ebaugh, Helen Rose, 90–91, 99, 116, 235n35 Ecclesiae Sanctae (Governing of the Holy Church), 15, 64, 127 education, 122; in Belgian Congo, 44, 173–74; in Democratic Republic of Congo, 173–74, 182–87. See also under Congo-Kinshasa Province; poverty education programs, adult, 124, 153, 157. See also English for speakers of other languages Emmanuel College, 86, 95, 101, 152 English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), 124, 145, 156, 157 Evangelica Testificatio (Evangelical Witness), 128 Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World), 67, 122 Evangelization, Commission for, 67 Evans, Elizabeth Eisenstadt, 234n21 Fathers of the Faith, 28. See also Jesuits Fenwick, Benedict, 150 Finke, Roger, 64, 91, 116 food, Congolese, 202, 217–18

270 / Index formation process, religious, 11, 13, 198– 99, 234n21 Fox, Renée, 48 France, Julie Billiart and, 28, 207. See also Amiens, France Francis, Pope, 197 Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary (FMMs), 118, 210, 211 friendships, “particular,” 80

health services, 181. See also nursing profession Hilton, Conrad N., 236n39 Hilton Catholic Sisters Initiative, 16, 17, 198 Hilton Foundation, 3, 15–17, 91, 236n39 Hilton Fund for Sisters, 197 Hochschild, Adam, 37–38 holiness, calls to, 91, 234n30

Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World), 66, 91, 122 gender inequalities, 90–91, 122, 186–87, 235n35; addressing, 183–87, 253n28; Lycée Sala-salakia and, 186. See also procreation; women’s rights global Catholic sisterhood: the challenge of building a, 201–6; development of, 207; donor interest in, 15. See also transnationalism Global South, 1, 2, 21, 22, 203; congregations moving novitiates to, 198; religious life in, 14–15 Global South and Global North, 2, 9, 232n4; exchange of ideas, practices, and resources between, 12, 22, 52, 172; partnerships between people in, 6; relationships between sisters in, 12, 126, 143, 199 God, 73; charism and, 249n21; fidelity to, 130; goodness of, 1, 3, 25, 26, 29, 202; love of, 1, 29, 73, 80, 175; obedience to, 29–30, 134, 137 (see also obedience); relationship with, 79, 104; spiritual gifts and, 234n30, 249n21; talking to, 101, 104–6; will of, 108, 118, 127. See also called by God Goethals, Thérèse (Mo. Ignace), 30, 31f grants, 3, 15–16, 156, 157 Greater Boston, 6, 7, 69; evolution of ministries in, 124–26; pathways to religious life in, 92–107 Guinness, Henry Grattan, 37

identity formation, 10 Ignace, Mo. (Thérèse Goethals), 30, 31f immigrants, 155–57, 232n4; and growing diversity among sisters, 89–91 immigration, 151; immigration case managers, 81, 93, 157, 166–67. See also Irish immigration imperialism, 12, 27, 32–34, 239n25. See also Belgian Congo inculturation, 65, 211; nature of, 66–67, 233n10; use of the term, 66, 233n10, 244n17; Vatican II and a developing theology of, 66–68, 116 International African Association, 34 International Office for Africa and Latin America, 18, 20, 21. See also Congregational Mission Office of SNDdeN Ipswich Province, 63, 65, 124–26, 196–97; membership, 92, 102; sisters in, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 87, 120, 123, 124, 130–32, 145, 163–64, 196, 211–14. See also Congregational Mission Office of SNDdeN Irish American sisters, 40, 88, 151, 209 Irish Catholic communities, supporting, 96–98 Irish immigration, 40, 150–51

Hansen, Thomas Blom, 27, 237n8 Health Center René de Haes, 179–80 health centers, 179–81. See also dispensaries

Jesuit mission in Bandundu, 41 Jesuit mission in Kimwenza, 32, 35 Jesuit University in Managua, 19 Jesuits (Society of Jesus), 28, 66, 111, 209– 10, 245n30; African, 210; in Congo, 31– 32, 35–36, 39, 41–44, 219; Cristo Rey schools and, 163; inculturation and, 233n10; Kisantu and, 35–37, 41, 43; seminaries, 41; Sisters of Notre Dame and, 32, 35, 39, 41–42, 111, 241n63 John Paul II, Pope, 67

Index / 271 Johnson, Mary, 92 Jubilee Fund, 21–22, 249n24 Julie Renewal Program, 171, 199 Julie’s Children’s House, 161 Julie’s Family Learning Program, 158–63, 169, 207; founders of, 124, 148, 161; history, 124, 161–62; overview, 124; school founded by, 241n63; services offered by, 160; teachers at, 168 Kasavubu, Joseph, 44, 49 Katanga Province, 49 Kikongo, 35, 43, 58, 125, 222 Kimbondo, Pierre, 48, 50 Kimwenza, Congo, 35, 45, 52, 74, 89, 111, 140, 179, 183, 201; annual retreat in, 75; Church of St. Mary in, 72f; communal prayers and meals in, 63; Congolese Sisters of Notre Dame in, 3; food in, 141; Jesuit mission in, 32, 35; Notre Dame health center and maternity hospital in, 126, 137; St. Julie and, 25, 26; vow ceremony in, 205; vow day in, 71. See also provincial house; specific topics Kimwenza dispensary, 181, 219 Kimwenza Health Center René de Haes, 179 Kingdom of Kongo, 32, 239n25, 241n60 Kinshasa, 67, 72, 110–13, 119, 121, 137, 138, 180, 182, 210; transportation, 5, 35, 182, 210, 214, 216. See also CongoKinshasa Province; Léopoldville Kisantu, Congo, 3–5; convents in, 5, 47f, 48, 71, 222–23; formation house for SNDdeN in, 107; Jesuits and, 35–37, 41, 43; missions in, 35–37, 48, 108, 241n63; novitiate in, 46, 89; schools in, 41, 43, 110; sisters in, 49, 50, 110, 201, 213, 214, 220, 222, 223t, 241n63; students in, 241n63. See also provincial house; Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu Kitewo, Marie Angèle, 31–55 Know Nothing Party, 151 Kongo, Kingdom of, 32, 239n25, 241n60 land system and women’s landownership, 184–85 lauds (morning prayer), 58

“lay sisters,” 238n12 Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), 192–93, 197 Lemfu, Congo, 5, 41–43, 50; convent in, 43, 185, 222–23; mission in, 35, 41, 48, 108, 241n63; schools in, 140, 241n63; sisters in, 41, 43, 50, 68, 125, 201, 213, 214, 220, 222 Leopold II of Belgium: and Belgian missionaries from the Society of Jesus, 31–32; civilizing mission, 37; concordat with the Vatican, 8, 39; Congo and, 34, 35, 37–39; cruelty and abuses, 37–39; New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa, 33–34; opposition to and criticism of, 34, 35, 37–39 Léopoldville (Kinshasa), Congo, 35, 48, 49, 54. See also Kinshasa Levitt, Peggy, 26 Link, Marie Joséphine, 40 Linscott, Mary, 25, 55 Loretto Julia, Mo., 52, 129, 152–53 Lumumba, Patrice, 49 Lwata, Maria, 41–42 Lycée Sala-salakia, 186 Malula, Cardinal Joseph, 54, 68 Marie Aloyse, Mo., 251n21 Marie Julienne, Mo., 152 Maximum Illud (On the Propagation of the Faith throughout the World), 41 Mbala, Marie Gonzague, 46–48, 51 Mbwanga, Elizabeth Marie, 54, 243n99 McElroy, John, 149 McGroarty, Julia, 152, 251n21 McNeil, Lou F., 233n10 Menino, Tom, 162 ministry, choice of, 6, 128, 133 Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaïre (Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire). See rite zaïrois missionary institutes, 211. See also Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary missions nationales, state subsidies to, 40 Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph-Désiré Mobutu): authenticité campaign, 7, 54; authoritarianism, 49, 53–54, 71; Catholic Church and, 53–54; coups orchestrated by, 49, 53; Joseph Kasavubu

272 / Index Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph-Désiré Mobutu) (continued) and, 49; nationalization of schools, 54, 137, 174; Patrice Lumumba and, 49; as president, 49; religion and, 54, 174; renaming himself, 54; women’s dress and, 7, 54, 71 Morel, Edmund Dene, 37–38 motherhood, constructing spiritual, 113– 14. See also chastity; procreation Mpese, Congo, 39, 42, 48, 108, 125 Mpongo, Laurent, 67 Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women on the Occasion of the Marian Year), 114 Mullen, Janet, 36f Native American Party (Know Nothing Party), 151 Neal, Marie Augusta, 64, 90 Ngidinga, Congo, 3, 39, 48 Ngidinga dispensary, 125, 126 Nigeria, 2, 3, 78, 171 Nigerian sisters, 2–3, 6, 12, 171 Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence, Mass., 142, 163, 164, 168 Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC), 124, 149 novices, 42, 46, 48, 51, 68, 101–3, 105, 107, 115, 138; aspirations and expectations, 88; choosing their congregations, 50; first Congolese mistress of, 68; living in community, 100–101; nature of, 234n21; obstacles encountered by the first Congolese, 42, 47–48; Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu and, 43, 48, 50, 51; teaching and training received by, 43, 52, 86, 198; use of the term, 234n21 nuns, meanings and uses of the term, 231n1. See also sisters nursing profession, 33, 118, 121–23, 135, 142, 184 Nwaka, Chris Egbulem, 67 Oates, Mary, 251n21 obedience, vow of: accountability and, 126; from obedience to discernment, 126– 35. See also God: obedience to

orders. See religious institutes ordination celebration, 72f orphans, 29, 32, 125, 175 outward renewal, 13, 66 PACE program, 201, 202, 219, 220, 223, 224 Pagis, Michal, 114–15 parishes, 247n29; African American, 40; Archdiocese of Boston, 129, 131. See also St. Julie Billiart Parish “particular friendships,” 80 Paul the Apostle, 249n21 Paul VI, Pope, 67, 128, 244n12 Pelende, Congo, 118, 125 Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life), 15, 64 Phan, Peter, 66 photovoltaic systems, 3, 5, 18. See also African Photovoltaic Project pontifical institutes, 33, 231n1, 236n38 postimperial formations, 27, 237n8 postulant house, 218 postulants, 46, 48, 50, 115, 140, 234n21, 246n7; obstacles encountered by the first Congolese, 42; Sisters of Notre Dame and, 42; terminology, 105, 224n21, 234n21. See also candidates poverty, 83–84, 128, 146–48, 163–66, 172, 173, 181, 182; schools, education, and, 29, 154, 162–66, 211; working with and serving the poor, 24, 119, 128, 162, 166, 172, 180, 181, 190, 191, 204. See also D Street Housing Project poverty, vow of, 91, 111, 175, 201, 231n1; accountability and, 126; explaining the, 178; living it in the Congo-Kinshasa province, 176–83; new interpretations of, 146; sisters’ family members and, 172, 177–78; terminology, 43 prayer, communal/community, 7, 25, 58, 61–63, 65, 68–70, 76, 79, 216 priests, 231n1 procreation, as goal/duty of women, 111– 13. See also chastity Protestant missionaries, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40 provinces, celebrating sisterhood across, 70–75. See also specific provinces

Index / 273 provincial house (of the congregation), 7–8, 74f, 186–87; annual retreat, 75; celebration at, 71, 72; courtyard, 60f; daily life at, 140, 206, 216–20, 222; relocated from Kisantu to Kimwenza, 110. See also specific topics public life, the limitations of religious sisterhood in, 187–90 Purcell, Bishop John, 30, 149 Purcell, Edward, 240n51 racial and ethnic diversity among sisters, 89–90, 220–21. See also black sisters racial integration in South Boston, responding to, 155–58 recruiting participants in Greater Boston, 214–16 religion, transnationalism and, 9. See also transnationalism; specific topics religious assemblages, 23, 26 religious formation. See formation process religious institutes, 104; factors contributing to declining membership in, 197; formation of African, 13; global, 9; membership in, as personal “vocation,” 122; mission of, 122; terminology, 231n1; women’s, 2, 12, 15, 17, 89, 104, 179, 198, 231n1, 236n38. See also specific institutions religious practices in two places, communal and personal, 62–63 renewal programs, 120. See also Julie Renewal Program; Vatican II: renewal (process) and retreats, 30, 37, 50, 53f, 71, 74, 75 rite zaïrois, le (Zairian rite/Zaire Use), 67, 210 Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. See Archdiocese of Boston Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), 66 Saint-Joseph, Mo. (Françoise Blin de Bourdon), 11, 24, 25, 152, 153, 238n16; background, 28; bishop of Amiens and, 33; in Congo, 46; Julie Billiart and, 11, 24, 25, 28–30, 33, 238n16; as mother/

superior general, 30, 46, 152; reforms implemented by, 152; schools opened by, 152–53, 166; Sisters of Notre Dame, 24, 28–30, 46, 152; tomb, 31f; vows, 28–29 Scherz, China, 175, 235n34 Schneiders, Sandra, 198 school fees, collecting, 182–83 Scramble for Africa, Catholic sisters in the, 31–35 Second Vatican Council. See Vatican II segregated orders, 40 Sheppard, William, 38 Sister Formation Conference and Movement, 122, 153; goals, 122–23 sisterhood, global. See global Catholic sisterhood “sisters,” meanings and uses of the term, 231n1, 234n21 Sisters of Charity from Emmitsburg, 150 Sisters of Charity of Ghent, 31 Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (SNDdeN/SND), 1–3, 93; first formation house for, 107; founding of, 27–31; mission statement, 1, 211; provinces, 231n2 (see also specific provinces); spiritual mission/charism of, 11, 63. See also specific topics Sisters of St. Joseph, 33, 35, 100, 101, 149, 163 Sisters of the Holy Child, 101, 102 Sisters of the Holy Family (SFF), 40 slavery and slave trade in Congo, 32, 34, 35, 37, 239n25 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Soeurs de Sainte Marie de Kisantu, 43, 45, 46, 48–51 St. Julie Billiart Parish, 200, 207; Père Varin and, 238n12 Stanislaus, Mary, 149–50, 162 Stanley, Henry Morton, 33–34, 37 Stark, Rodney, 64, 91, 116 sustainable development, 17, 21, 175, 190–91, 209; building environmentally sustainable technologies, 12; polysemic nature of, 17 sustainable development framework, 16, 17, 190–91

274 / Index sustainable development goals (SDGs), 16; United Nations, 16–17, 237n42 Thombe, Moïse, 49 transnational belonging, 10, 11, 203 transnational identities, 10, 200, 201, 203; constructing, 6–12. See also collective identities transnational networks, 10, 11, 19, 23 transnational organizations, 6, 12, 210, 232n4; women’s religious orders as, 210. See also transnational religious orders transnational processes, 10 transnational relationships, 11, 141, 215 transnational religious orders, 172, 176, 193, 200, 210 transnational social-fields approach, 10 transnationalism, 17, 190–91, 199–201, 203, 232n4; global migration and, 9; religion and, 9. See also global Catholic sisterhood; specific topics Trinity College, founding of, 152, 251n22 Turner, Mary Daniel, 55 Turner, Thomas, 39 Twain, Mark, 38 Ugandan Roman Catholic sisters, 175, 191, 235n34 Union des Supérieurs Majeures en République de Zaïre (USUMA), 67, 68 unity, the struggle for, 18–22 Ursulines, 150 Van de Borne, Thérèse, 54 Van de Ryst, Father, 36 Van den Bosch, Brother, 36 Van Hencxthoven, Father, 32, 35 Van Wing, Father, 43–44 Varin, Père Joseph, 28, 238n12 Vatican, 50, 197–98; accountability to the, 33; Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and, 192–93, 197;

Leopold II’s concordat with the, 8, 39; national church hierarchy in Belgian Congo established by, 44; sisters and, 194, 197; Sisters of Notre Dame and, 179, 194; United States and, 31. See also Vatican II Vatican II (Second Vatican Council), 56, 91, 121–22, 130, 165, 200; Africa and, 67, 116; Boston and, 124, 126, 129, 148, 167; choosing religious life after, 100–107; and a developing theology of inculturation, 66–68; Napoléon’s 1801 concordant with, 28; Pope Paul VI and, 128; reforms, 15, 66, 100; renewal (process) and, 13, 15, 25, 52, 55, 64, 66, 68, 100, 122, 128, 153, 207; a shift in mission and ministry among Catholic sisters, 121–24; sisters and, 64, 73, 83–85, 90, 99, 124, 127, 128, 130, 167; Sisters of Notre Dame and, 52, 56, 64–65, 83, 126, 135, 143, 148; on the status of sisters and nuns, 15, 231n1; and the vow of chastity, 114; and the vow of obedience, 135. See also Vatican Verwimp, Alphonse, 43, 46, 50 Waltham Province, 152–53 Willingham, Saundra Ann, 246n7 Wombali mission, 39, 41–42, 241n63 women, roles of. See gender inequalities; motherhood; procreation “women with hearts as wide as the world,” 1, 10, 24, 211 women’s centers, 184 women’s rights, 41. See also gender inequalities Wong, Diana, 26 Zaire, 17–18, 54–55, 67 Zairian rite. See rite zaïrois Zairianization. See authenticité (Zairianization) campaign