“In the past, the nuns suffered a lot and couldn’t talk about it to anyone; it was like a secret,“ Sister Cristina Schorck told AFP, walking through St Peter’s Square with her parents.
After an unprecedented summit at the Vatican on clerical sexual violence in 2019, a series of measures were taken, including lifting the pontifical secret on abuse and an obligation for people to report cases to their superiors.
The slow shift in attitudes is exemplified by the case of the influential Slovenian priest and mosaics artist Marko Rupnik, accused by nuns of sexual and psychological violence against them in the early 1990s.
Laura Sgro, the Italian lawyer for five of his accusers, told AFP that nuns should be better protected “both by states and by canon law”, notably by extending the statute of limitations, and said the next pope must act “immediately”.
“Things are moving forward step by step,“ a senior ecclesiastical official told AFP on condition of anonymity, pointing out that Francis “has denounced all forms of abuse“.
Among them, Sister Marthe, a nun from Cameroon in her forties, said she wanted the Church to “know how” to respond to “sexual (or) power abuse“.
In January, Francis named a woman to head a Vatican ministry for the first time in the Church's 2,000-year history.
It is the legacy of a “pyramidal” and “macho” vision, said Marta Gadaleta, Secretary General of the Augustinian Servants of Jesus and Mary.
In January, Francis himself called for the Church to “overcome” the “macho mentality”, insisting that nuns should not be treated “like servants”.
In 2016, it invited its members to report violence, and it also organises training sessions to “raise awareness”, Secretary General Patricia Murray told AFP.
The information from the training sessions needs to be passed on to local communities, Sister Margron said.
Above all, she said, “we mustn’t expect everything from the Vatican”, so as not to fall back into the age-old trap of “waiting for men to speak”.
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