RELIGIOUS SIGHTINGS Religious communities welcome more new members SISTER ADRIANA Calzada became a new member of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 2016. She shows off the ring she wears to indicate her connection to her community, along with Sister Teresa Maya, C.C.V.I.
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HE LATEST STUDIES about men and women entering religious life in the United States reveal an increase in both those who began the entrance process and those who completed it. The number of Americans taking final vows in a religious community in 2016 was 216, the highest since 2010, according
ALEJANDRA MARQUEZ; COURTESY OF SISTERS OF CHARITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD
to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). While those 216 individuals completed the entrance process, 502 people began the process to become a sister, brother, or religious priest. Those 502 represent an increase in the annual number entering religious life; there were 411 entrants in 2015. CARA studies also show increased education levels for new members and less personal prayer at the time of entrance. Personal prayer has gone down by 9 percent since 2010, a trend possibly connected to the fact that fewer people than ever in the United States take part in private spiritual practices. The 2016 CARA studies provide the most recent data on the subject of who is entering religious life in the United States, and the studies can be downloaded at nrvc.net.
SEBASTIÁN CORTÉS - LA NUEVA
SHANTYTOWN SISTER
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ISTER CONSTANZA Roldán Azorín arrived in Argentina in 2011 after decades as a history professor in Spain, and within a short time she has launched a second career as a shantytown outreach worker. A few years ago she was featured in La Nueva, a newspaper in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. The reporter noted her energy: In spite of her 71 years, she walked 27 blocks rather than spend money on a bus. On a single afternoon, she stopped by several homes where she chatted up the residents and updated them on projects. For one, she had secured a good price on a wood-fired cooking stove. For another, she was working with a church group to get low-priced construction materials to better a cobbled-together house. For another, she had secured a nebulizer for a sick child. And these were only the personal visits. Within her first three years, Roldán also helped start a community center that offered classes in sewing,
8 | VISION 2018 | VocationNetwork.org
SISTER CONSTANZA Roldán Azorín walks through the shantytown surrounding Bahía Blanca, Argentina. crafts, catechesis, and child rearing. Roldán sees her efforts as simply one more way to live out her religious community’s commitment to lifting up the poor and marginalized. In her first decades as a sister she was a history professor, dedicated to reconciling the deep divisions in Spain that date back to its civil war (1936-39).
Today she hopes to continue to bear the Good News. “With evangelization as my goal,” she told La Nueva, “I share the position of Pope Francis to go out to the periphery and not so much make myself poor, but rather to put myself into their bodily reality and transmit the word of God to them as their equal.”
