RELIGIOUS SIGHTINGS SISTER STARES DOWN KILLERS
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ISTER CONSUELO MORALES, C.S.A., a Canoness of St. Augustine of the Congregation of Our Lady, spends her days thinking about things the rest of us would rather not: torture and assassination by drug lords and corrupt government officials in Mexico. The Los Angeles Times called her “one of Mexico’s most indefatigable and effective defenders of human rights.” In 1992, following what Sister Consuelo has called her own crisis of faith, she founded CADHAC, the Spanish acronym for Citizens
in Support of Human Rights. She and other CADHAC staff receive a steady stream of visitors to their Monterrey, Mexico office: usually distraught family members of victims and survivors of violence. They listen to and document violations of human rights, and they take legal steps toward justice. Often that means walking past or confronting soldiers and officials complicit in the crimes. “She can be disarming to authority figures who are used to people fearing them. She could be their grandmother. It’s a firmness and sincerity they have not heard before. But then she also has this gentleness and warmth with the victims and families,” Nik Steinberg of the organization Human Rights Watch told the Times. Morales’ work has stirred anger, but love and admiration are perhaps more common. In 2011 she was presented the Alison Des Forges Award from Human Rights Watch for valor in defending human rights. SISTER CONSUELO MORALES speaks at a CADHAC (Ciudadanos en Apoyo a los Derechos Humanos) event.
Rare “twinning” brings men and women monastics together
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HOSE WHO LIVE an “enclosed” religious life of contemplative prayer generally see only the members of their own, single-sex community on a regular basis. The Benedictine monks and nuns of a pair of religious com-
munities in Petersham, Massachusetts, however, have an unusual arrangement: They are twinned. That means the sisters of St. Scholastica Priory and the brothers and priests of St. Mary’s Monastery attend daily Mass together, pray five of the seven daily prayers of the Divine Office as a group, share responsibility for a guest house, gather for conversation once a week, and occasionally attend talks and lectures together. Mother Mary Elizabeth Kloss, O.S.B., prioress of St. Scholastica, tells VISION: “Our experience of the twin community has enriched our life on several levels. The
SISTER MARY Frances Wynn, Marlene Gomez (postulant), Brother Bernard Osbaldeston, Brother Matthew Jackson, Sister Mary Emmanuel Wade, Brother Isidore Colm, Sister Mary Paula Wenzel, and Sister Mary Angela Kloss at an intercommunity gathering.
first is that our liturgical celebrations are richer and fuller. . . . The men’s voices keep ours from becoming too high and delicate, and the female voices help to keep their voices bright somehow. . . . We are friends both collectively as communities and as individuals. This relationship keeps us from getting too ‘ingrown’ and self-centered and fosters charity.” Mother Kloss says this kind of pairing of independent men’s and women’s communities is rare—she knew only of three communities worldwide—but it has existed since the fourth century. “We’re celibate,” she says, “but there’s a mutuality of relationship that’s natural between men and women.”
8 | VISION 2015 | VocationNetwork.org
