CATH NEWS REPORT: A Vatican official said the Holy See should pursue a "strategy of reconciliation" with US religious currently undergoing a visitation, according to a report on LifeSiteNews, based on an interview in the National Catholic Reporter.
Archbishop Joseph Tobin, Secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said in the interview that he does not expect any "punitive" fallout from the visitation, and that before any decisions are made, women's communities should have a chance to know the results and to respond.
"I can say that I would be very surprised if anybody would purport to give any punitive or overly prescriptive norms as a result of this visitation," Archbishop Tobin said, according to the LifeSiteNews report. "If the visitors, in dialogue with the sisters, have identified some specific issues that need to be dealt with, okay. But forcing people into habits or something like that? That's not what this is about."
Tobin also said that a major shake-up of women's religious orders "would be really disrespectful of what women religious in America have accomplished," and that the "depth of anger and hurt that exists among the sisters ... can't be ignored."LifeSiteNews said the Archbishop's words contrasts statements made by now-Cardinal Raymond Burke, in a speech earlier this year, in which he condemned American nuns who have promised "resistance" to the Vatican and have endorsed the Obama health care plan despite its potential to fund abortion procedures.
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