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This may be the most disturbing thing you read all day.A Catholic nun said that the defeat in the Senate of the pro-life Nelson amendment on the feast of the Immaculate Conception was "providential" and that Mary was the first woman in the bible to express "choice."As you have probably heard by now the Nelson amendment to the health-care bill, which would have restricted federal funds from being used to fund abortions, has been defeated 54-45. This should be a sad day for all Catholics, but it is not. In fact, one Catholic nun is downright giddy over the defeat....

My Life of Drink and One-Night Stands Left Me Feeling Hollow, Now I've Found The Answer: I'm Going To Be A Nun KATIE COLBRAN 05th November 2009 New order: In a few weeks, Katie Colbran will become a trainee nun For the past four years, I've led the kind of glamorous life some people only dream about. Regularly jetting off to exotic destinations such as Rome, Istanbul and Marrakech, I've been fortunate enough to stay in some of the most exclusive hotels and see some amazing sights. I've made dozens of friends, partied until the early hours in some of...

The slaying of a 64-year-old Catholic nun in her convent over the weekend has stunned and saddened a small Navajo Nation community about 30 miles northwest of Gallup. The FBI is looking for suspects in the death of Sister Marguerite Bartz, a 10-year resident of the community of Navajo, who was killed on church property at St. Berard Mission Church. The FBI would not release details about the manner of death or other aspects of the investigation. They confirmed they are looking for a suspect or suspects who may be armed and dangerous, as well as the vehicle Bartz had...

Holladay » Barbara Whipperman was a pious teenager, a defender of the faith. When her parents bought a can of coffee, before they even could brew a pot, she saved them from themselves. "I tossed the whole can," the 76-year-old recalls, laughing raucously. "I was a good little Mormon girl. Oh, they were mad!" How that good little Mormon girl from Sugar House came to be Sister Mary Joseph, a Catholic -- and a nun, no less -- is a story she tells with relish. A member of the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a cloistered monastery that...

Nun becomes top-selling Polish cookbook writer By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer Saturday, July 18, 2009 Emerging from the quiet of her convent, Sister Anastazja Pustelnik was confronted by a jarring image — her smiling face on posters plastered around town to hawk the cookbooks that have made the 59-year-old nun one of Poland's best-selling authors. It's fame Sister Anastazja never bargained for when she left the material world as a young woman, expecting to toil in obscurity for God. But her ability to create easy-to-follow recipes for delectable cakes and traditional home cooking has resulted in five cookbooks since...

Sister Emmanuelle, France's answer to Mother Teresa, who has died aged 99 was an unorthodox nun who spent 20 years helping the poor in a Cairo slum before returning to France to defend the homeless. The diminutive Roman Catholic nun, whose real name was Madeleine Cinquin, was best known in France for her frequent appearances on television to campaign passionately for the poor and homeless. She came to media attention with her work with some of the world's poorest people, the residents of the Ezbet El-Nakhl slum in Cairo who eke out their living by scavenging in the garbage produced...

Cleveland nun to close one night of Democratic convention with prayer By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service WASHINGTON – St. Joseph Sister Catherine Pinkerton of Cleveland is not usually one to seek the spotlight, but she will take center stage at the Democratic National Convention Aug. 27 when she gives the benediction to close the party’s third day of business. Sister Catherine, 86, a lobbyist for Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby, will close the convention on the night that Sen. Barack Obama is expected to formally become the party’s nominee for president. The invitation to lead the prayer...

A young nun who was ticketed by San Jose police on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe for selling little statues of the Blessed Virgin to raise money for a soup kitchen wants the charges against her expunged, the San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday. [[DACarr081508.jpg]]In a column by writer Scott Herhold, the Mercury News recounted the story of Notre Dame Sister Marie Linie Marot, 28, who wants Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr to issue a "finding of factual innocence" regarding charges lodged against her as a result of a Dec. 12, 2007 incident outside Our Lady...

Sister Ruth Lautt works from a single room on the 19th floor of the God Box. Such is the nickname for the Interchurch Center, the office building on Riverside Drive in Manhattan that is the closest thing to a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, Sister Ruth’s fellow tenants include agencies of the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Wearing the tapered suits left over from an earlier career in law and the crucifix of her more recent life as a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Ruth cuts an inconspicuous figure at the...

Sister Cristina Angelini has been called the heart and soul of Shreveport's Renzi Center, an early child development center run by the Catholic church. But the federal government might be getting ready to tear that heart out. In a country where there are millions of illegal aliens -- and a shortage of Catholic sisters -- the feds are threatening to make her leave and return to her native Italy. Exactly why, the government couldn't tell KTBS News today. It might be a bureaucratic mixup. Sister Cristina got a letter from the government last week, telling her she must leave the...

God and global warming: Religion and science unite on climate change by Paul Dailing Feb 06, 2008 Professor Mary Frohlich wears trim business suits, teaches global climate change and talks about historical links between the oppression of the earth and the oppression of women. She is a Roman Catholic nun. “People who know about nuns are not surprised,” Frohlich said, laughing. While some religious and scientific groups might be at odds over issues such as evolution and stem-cell research, over the last few years they have found common ground on global warming and climate change. “I would say that it’s...

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- A 79-year-old nun was sentenced Friday to one year in a county jail for sexually abusing two teens when she was their principal four decades ago. Sister Norma Giannini avoided a trial by pleading no-contest in November to two felony counts of indecent behavior with a child. "I ask forgiveness from the bottom of my heart," she told Circuit Judge M. Joseph Donald at her sentencing. One of Giannini's accusers, James St. Patrick, 55, asked Donald to impose a longer sentence. After the hearing, he said he was angry. "When are we going to start dealing with...

The nuns began studying the martial arts as a form of exercise. Several of them workout regularly. Though they would never use the arts to hurt someone, a number of them have become quite good. Sister Mary, who is just over five feet tall, is the most serious.

Pro-Life Groups Asks Bishop to Stop Sister Helen Prejean's Fundraising for ACLU By John-Henry Westen BOISE, September 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Idaho Choose Life (ICL) has issued a public call for Idaho's Catholic Bishop, Mike Driscoll "to intervene quickly and forcefully in the brewing scandal involving Sister Helen Prejean." Sister Prejean is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at an event to raise money for the Idaho ACLU on Friday, September 28th.  (see ACLU website announcement: http://www.acluidaho.org/ ) Speaking of ACLU, ICL Executive Director David Ripley said "This nefarious organization has played a pivotal role in undermining Christian morality and...

Hijabbed security guard frisks nun (thanks to all who sent this in). Of course there should be random searches, and no one should be exempt -- if any group is exempt, its dress will soon be adopted by the terrorists. But there is an absurdity to this photo. And a hint that maybe we would do better devoting our resources to searching those who are more likely to be threats -- were that not so politically incorrect.

On February 3,1994, Mother Teresa came to Washington and gave a speech that left the entire audience dazzled and part of it dismayed, including a United States senator who turned to his wife after Mother Teresa concluded and said, “Is my jaw up yet?” It was the annual National Prayer Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel and three thousand people were there, including most of official Washington. The breakfast is always an interesting and unusual gathering in the capital in that it is informed by an unspoken goodwill and because famous people, usually political figures, are invited to talk about what...

The waist-length pigtails are gone, replaced by a layer of dusty blonde hair so short it doesn't need a brush. Those '80s tennis skirts are history, too. In their place, a black nun's habit belted with a band of white rope that her dogs like to chew. One constant: Sister Andrea Jaeger isn't quite who everyone might think she is. Even when she was a teenage tennis star — all backhands and braces — she knew she wouldn't last long in that world, though hers was not a typical tale of burnout or overbearing parents. She succumbed to an injury...

A PRIEST was jailed for 14 years yesterday for killing a nun by crucifixion during an exorcism. Maricica Irina Cornici, 23, died after five days hanging on a cross with no food or water and gagged with a towel. Father Petru Corogeanu, 31, told the court: "She was acting as if she had supernatural powers and I realised she was possessed by a demon." The monk blamed paramedics for giving Cornici too much adrenaline when they tried to resuscitate her. Corogeanu was convicted of depriving the nun of her freedom. Four nuns were also jailed for their part in the...

Young nuns from the Sisters of Life Convent play volleyball near the water on the SUNY Maritime Campus in the Bronx, September 2006 ...Over the past five years, Roman Catholic communities around the country have experienced a curious phenomenon: more women, most in their 20s and 30s, are trying on that veil. Convents in Nashville, Tenn.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and New York City all admitted at least 15 entrants over the past year and fielded hundreds of inquiries. One convent is hurriedly raising funds for a new building to house the inflow, and at another a rush of new blood...

A Roman Catholic nun has been sentenced to serve 30 years in a Rwandan jail for her part in the 1994 genocide. Sister Theophister Mukakibibi was found guilty of helping Hutu militiamen kill hundreds of Tutsi who were sheltering at the hospital in Butare where she worked. In a year-long trial before one of Rwanda's traditional gacaca courts, more than 20 witnesses testified against her, saying that she led Hutu fighters to their victims, denied food to the Tutsis and dumped a baby in a latrine. "She would select Tutsi, throw them out of the hospital for the militia to...

A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab, and the cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why is he staring. He replies, "I have a question to ask you, but I don't want to offend you." She answers, "My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a Nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive." "Well, I've always had a fantasy...

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI gave Catholics four news saints Sunday, bestowing the honor on a 19th-century nun who struggled on the American frontier, a bishop who tended to the wounded during the Mexican Revolution and two Italian clergy. French-born Mother Theodore Guerin endured harsh conditions on the American frontier and resisted the objections of a local bishop in pursuing her dream of establishing Catholic education for pioneers. She established a college for women in Indiana, which enrolled its first student in 1841. Among those at the ceremony on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica were ailing Chicago...

A nun and two church-goers are thanking the heavens after getting caught in the middle of a dangerous shootout and walking away unharmed. Sister Carol Van Billiard, Kathleen Hatten and another convent volunteer found themselves in the middle of the crossfire which broke out on Jersey City's Ocean Avenue Tuesday night. Hatten said when they heard the gunshots, they all ducked, grabbed each other's hands, and started to pray. "There was nothing else left to do, it was so terrifying," Hatten said. Van Billiard said when she saw the gaping bullet hole in her car fender, she knew immediately that...

Nun killed as guards gun down refugees from Tibet By Thomas Bell in Kathmandu (Filed: 12/10/2006) At the end of their terrible journey, a group of Tibetan refugees yesterday told how a nun was shot dead and 14 children taken away at gunpoint by Chinese border guards during a 20-day march to escape across the Himalaya. Seventy-five men, women and children started out, often walking at night to avoid security patrols but only 41 made it to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, leaving the young nun dead in the snow and another man lying wounded. The remainder, including the children, were...

TWO British mountaineers described in graphic detail yesterday how they saw Chinese border guards shoot dead one of a group of Tibetans trying to cross the border into Nepal last month.Steve Marsh and a British police officer who asked not to be identified were having breakfast at Advance Base Camp beneath Mount Chu Oyu, near Everest. “As we watched, first I heard a shot, then I saw one [guard] stop and there was a second shot and a third,” Mr Marsh told The Times. “The rearmost of the group fell to the ground. Someone helped them up and they continued...

NAIROBI, Kenya An elderly nun shot four times at the Somali hospital where she worked forgave her killers as she lay dying, colleagues said Monday in the wake of a murder that has focused attention on Islamic radicalism in the Horn of Africa country. Sister Leonella, 65, muttered the words 'I forgive, I forgive' in Italian after being shot three times in the back by gunmen in an apparent execution-style killing, father Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun's memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday. Her murder — the latest slaying of a foreigner in...

NAIROBI, Kenya Sister Leonella, a nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in volatile regions of Africa, used to joke that there was a bullet with her name engraved on it in Somalia. When the bullet came, she used her last breaths to forgive those responsible. "I forgive, I forgive," she whispered in her native Italian just before she died, the Rev. Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun's memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday.

This morning, in a moment of idleness, I surfed through to Fox News, hoping vainly for a bit of actual news. After all, on the hour one might expect actual news from a news network. But my session with FNC was cut short by the spoken headline “Nun shot dead in Somalia. Is the Pope to blame?” Scuse me? I checked the channel ID to make sure I had FNC and not CNN by accident. Nope. FNC. And the TV went off. Ok. I know the babe was just reading from the teleprompter, but I wonder if she listens to...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Gunmen shot and killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam. The Catholic nun's bodyguard also died in the latest attack apparently aimed at foreign personnel in volatile Somalia. The assassinations were a blow to Mogadishu's new Islamist rulers' attempt to prove they have pacified one of the world's most lawless cities since chasing out warlords in June. The bodyguard died instantly, but the nun was rushed into an operating theater at the hospital...

Mogadishu 17, Sep. 06 ( Sh.M.Network) - Unidentified gunmen are reported to have raided Mogadishu’s SOS hospital and gunned down one of the foreign nuns in the hospital.Reliable sources say the nun, thought to be an Italian, is confirmed dead. A bodyguard of the nun instantly died after he was fatally shot by two men reportedly armed with handguns. Reports also indicate that the two assailants have been nabbed by armed guards within SOS hospital. Six other suspects have also arrested as one of the Islamic Courts leaders Sheik Yusuf Indho-adde told reporters. The motive of the attack remains unknown....

I served as a sister in a religious order for about fifty years and during all that time, I had never heard the true Gospel. Certain things may be let ride, but when it comes to the Gospel there can be no compromise, because the Gospel is the power of God for salvation. A false gospel cannot have that power and any church that preaches a perverted gospel is depriving its members of the foundational and most essential message, the message of salvation. False Teachers in the Early Church In the Bible we read of the churches in Galatia where...

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A 71-year-old nun who co-wrote a popular marriage-preparation program was arrested on charges of improperly spending more than $300,000 on casinos, gifts and air travel. Sister Barbara Markey, who was fired in January as director of the Omaha Archdiocese's family life office, turned herself in Wednesday and was released on her own recognizance. According to the arrest warrant, an audit found that Markey spent $307,545 for her own use or without documentation. Some of the money was spent on cash advances, casinos, gifts and airfare, the audit said. Defense attorney John Stevens Berry Sr. said the...

Toledo - A United States jury on Thursday found a Roman Catholic priest guilty of the Satanic rite-style murder of a 71-year-old nun, which went unsolved for more than 25 years. Father Gerald Robinson was immediately sentenced to a mandatory jail term of between 15 years and life. There were gasps in the court and some applauded in the hallway outside after the verdict was read, but the 68-year-old priest remained passive. Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was found murdered on a chapel floor in April 1980. She had been strangled, covered in an altar cloth and stabbed 31 times in...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP)-The body of a missing Catholic nun was found MOnday after her stolen cell phone led police to a parolee who was living in the home for former inmates where she worked, authorities said.

Surrounded by supporters and buoyed with their blessings, a Catholic nun today reported to prison for trespassing on government property. Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch will serve six months at a Lexington, Ky., federal prison for civil disobedience. Before leaving in a car caravan, about 20 supporters surrounded Lentsch in front of the John J. Duncan Federal Building downtown to sing songs and pray for her. Lentsch was sentenced for a November 2005 incident when she and other protesters entered the grounds of Fort Benning, Ga., which houses a school that has been blamed for human rights abuses in Latin...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Dolores Hart, who at age 24 startled the film world in 1962 by leaving a thriving screen career — including two roles opposite Elvis Presley — to become a nun, has returned to Hollywood for her first visit after 43 years in a monastery. Now the Rev. Mother Dolores Hart and prioress of the cloistered community at Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, she has been renewing friendships from her studio years. Why? To spread awareness about a largely mysterious neurological disorder that afflicts countless Americans, including herself, called peripheral idiopathic neuropathy. Last month, Hart testified...

Drink-driving Polish nun denounces policeman over bribe Thu Jan 12, 11:49 AM ET WARSAW (AFP) - A Polish nun who caused two accidents while driving under the influence of alcohol informed on a police officer who asked for a bribe to cover up her mishaps. The 35-year-old policeman has been accused of corruption and faces a possible jail sentence of up to eight years, said Ewa Weglarowicz-Makowska, spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office in Jelenia Gora, southwest Poland. The Benedictine nun caused two accidents, the first in 2004, when driving a tractor towing a snowplough, she hit a car parked...

he vilification of religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers and the Mercy Sisters, may have contributed to the scant media coverage the Nora Wall case received, writes Conor Brady On 1 December, a 56 year old woman entered the Court of Criminal Appeal in Dublin to seek a judicial declaration that she was innocent of a terrible crime, allegedly committed many years before. Grey-haired and thin, she appeared older than her years. Accompanied by her lawyers and her family, she entered and left the Four Courts without uttering a word. Six years previously, Nora Wall had been convicted in...

Sister Helen Prejean looks nothing like Susan Sarandon, the actress who played her in "Dead Man Walking," and that's good for New Jersey's death penalty opponents. Prejean is no celebrity do-gooder, no rich friend of the poor, not the edgy sort who might make some politicians self-conscious among, and annoyed at, limousine liberals. She is as plain as the dark suits and white blouses she wears, one of the few hints, just looking at her, that she is a member of a Catholic order of nuns. "I think New Jersey is going to be the leader in the country in...

MILWAUKEE (CNS) -- In a few minutes one night last April, Sister Mary Jo Kahl's life changed. She went from being an innocent bystander to becoming the victim of a carjacking. The 66-year-old Franciscan Sister of Mary also began a new journey of faith that has made her a promoter of restorative justice, pushing for a lighter sentence for one of her attackers and working with him to change his life. She'll never forget that night. When she arrived home from her job as a nurse case manager at Convent Hill Public Housing in Milwaukee, all the well-lit street parking...

DANBURY, Conn. - A pacifist nun convicted of defacing a Colorado missile silo in 2002 was released Thursday from federal prison. Ardeth Platte, 69, was not due to be released until May 31, but a judge gave her credit for time already served, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Platte, along with sisters Jackie Hudson and Carol Gilbert, were arrested in October 2002 after they allegedly cut a chain link fence surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo in northern Colorado. The nuns then used baby bottles to dispense their own blood in the shape of a cross on the...

The man accused of killing American nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang told a jury Friday that he acted in self-defense after mistaking her Bible for a gun. Rayfran das Neves Sales is accused of killing Stang, 73, with six shots from a .38-caliber revolver on Feb. 12 on a muddy road deep in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. Sales testified he and Stang had an argument over who owned the land he was working, and that Stang threatened to "finish him off" with the help of some 150 people living on a sustainable development reserve she...

Nine years ago, we published a story about Sister Patricia Rayburn of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Bend, who at midlife had taken up long-distance running. She was 52 years old then, and running marathons — 26.2-mile tests of physical endurance and mental toughness. Even she admitted it was a bit unconventional for a woman of her calling. At the time she was featured in The Bulletin, she had just completed her second Portland Marathon. We called her St. Francis Church's "Nun on the Run." Sister Patricia went on to run two more marathons, the last in 1999:...

"When he walks on to a movie set, he usually gets star treatment. But as Tom Hanks arrived at Lincoln Cathedral yesterday, he found himself somewhat upstaged. A handful of protesters were making their feelings known about the decision to film scenes from The Da Vinci Code in the historic building. Led by a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Michael, they claimed the movie, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown, should be filmed elsewhere. She led a 12-hour prayer vigil to push the message home."

Ngawang Sangdrol was just 13 years old when she was first thrown into prison by Chinese authorities in Tibet. She was so small that her prison guards found it easy to pick her up by the legs and drop her, head first, onto the stone floor of her cell. They beat her with iron rods, placed electric shock batons in her mouth and left her standing in the baking heat until she collapsed of exhaustion. They called her their “ballerina” — because when the pain became too much for her, she would stand on the tips of her toes like...

Romanian priest unrepentant after crucifixion of nun Sat Jun 18, 3:55 PM ET A Romanian Orthodox priest, facing charges for ordering the crucifixion of a young nun because she was "possessed by the devil," was unrepentant as he celebrated a funeral ceremony for his alleged victim. "God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," Father Daniel, 29, the superior of the Holy Trinity monastery in north-eastern Romania, told an AFP reporter before celebrating a short liturgy "for the soul of the deceased", in the presence of 13 nuns who showed no visible emotion. He insisted...

[Abstract]: A nun in a Romanian convent died as a result of exorcism [she was tied to a cross without food or water for 3 days] performed on her. A priest and several nuns involved has been charged.

A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said. Members of the convent in north-west Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual. Father Daniel Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police. On Saturday a priest and four nuns were charged in connection with her death. Orphan Police say the 23-year-old nun, who was denied food and drink throughout...

With a hammer, pliers and baby bottles filled with blood, Carol Gilbert and two other Dominican nuns defied America's military might three years ago, cutting through a fence to paint red crosses in blood on a nuclear missile silo in Colorado. Released yesterday after 33 months in federal prisons, Gilbert returned home to Baltimore and a potluck dinner party thrown by friends. Her only regret is that she was locked up during the war in Iraq when peace protests were at a peak. "I would do the same thing all over again," she said during the dinner at St. Peter...

SAO PAULO, Brazil - The rancher accused of ordering the slaying of American nun Dorothy Stang surrendered to police on Sunday, authorities said. Vitalmiro Moura, known as Bida, was taken into custody after turning himself in to federal police in Altamira, about 80 miles from where 73-year-old Stang was shot dead on Feb. 12, police said. Moura had been a fugitive since an arrest warrant was issued for him on Feb. 15.