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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...