Free Republic

When Dolores Hart, 73, walks the red carpet at this year's Academy Awards as planned, no interviewer will need to ask who made her dress. She will be wearing her nun's habit from the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., where she lives a life of contemplation and hospitality and is mother prioress. Mother Dolores, as she is now known, is the subject this year of an Oscar-nominated documentary short, "God Is the Bigger Elvis," which airs April 5 on HBO. The documentary chronicles her life as a nun after a Hollywood career that saw her co-star with...

Dolores Hart had it all. Billed as "the next Grace Kelly" for her beauty and acting talent, she had a seven-figure studio contract, roles opposite some of the industry's biggest names and was the envy of girls everywhere for giving Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss. During a break 1963, aged 24, she told her bosses at MGM she was heading to see friends in the country. They sent a limousine to drop her off at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut. It turned out to be a one-way journey. Next Sunday, nearly half a century after she...

MOUNT RAINIER, MARYLAND, February 15, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – On Valentine’s Day, a priest and a nun penned an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled, “A Catholic Case for Same-Sex Marriage.” Sister Jeannine Gramick and Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, wrote, “Many Catholics…understand that lesbian and gay love is as natural as heterosexual love.” “As Catholics who are involved in lesbian and gay ministry and outreach, we are aware that many people, some of them Catholics, believe that Catholics cannot faithfully disobey the public policies of the church’s hierarchy. But this is not the case,” they...

Church leaders in Kerala have expressed shock and outrage over the killing yesterday of tribal rights campaigner Sister Valsa John. The 53-year-old nun from the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary was hacked to death at her home in the remote Pakur district of the east Indian state of Jharkhand. According to reports a mob of around 50 people gathered outside her home in the early hours of yesterday morning (local time) shortly before her death. Earlier reports had said the nun had been shot dead. Major Archbishop and head of the Syro-Malabar Church, George Alencherry, and Curia Bishop...

Anchorage, Alaska, Oct 16, 2011 / 01:16 pm (CNA).- As young girls, Anastasia Kenney and her little sister played Mass. They cloaked their heads in a white curtain, draped accordingly as a bridal veil or a nun’s habit, and served crackers and grape juice to each other as they pretended to receive Holy Communion.Some 30 years later, Kenney is moving into a convent and aspiring to wear a white habit in earnest.The religious vocation startled even her.“I was horrified! I was the least nunnish person I knew,” said Kenney, 35, of her initial inclination. “I thought the last group of...

A Broward County man on Tuesday filed suit against the Archdiocese of Miami and a Dominican nun, claiming he was fondled and groped while in the first grade at St. James Catholic School in North Miami. The man, now 38, claims Sister Joan Marie would approach him while standing in line with his classmates and pretend to tuck in his shirt. But the nun would reach down his pants and sexually abuse him, said his attorney, Jeffrey Herman. Only identified as John Doe 73 — representing the number of cases Herman has filed against the archdiocese for alleged sexual misconduct...

Sister Marie Thornton, former vice president of finance at Iona College in New York, has pled guilty to embezzling $850,000 from the college between 1999 and 2009. “She abused her access to cook the books and line her own pockets,” said US Attorney Preet Bharara. Prosecutors charged that Sister Thornton used much of the stolen money for gambling. Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

A MONK and two other people were arrested after digging up the body of a nun they believe to be a saint and trying to smuggle the remains into Cyprus. The 42-year-old Cypriot monk, a 54-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at Athens International Airport as they attempted to board a flight to Cyprus with the body stuffed in a suitcase, the Cyprus Mail said. The Mail reported police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos as saying the trio "claim they took the remains of the woman, whom they consider a saint, to bury them in Cyprus". Mr Katsounotos said Eleni...

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France – A French nun says she felt new inner strength and vitality as her Parkinson's disease suddenly disappeared in 2005 — a recovery the Vatican attributes to the miraculous intercession of Pope John Paul II. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, who works at a Paris maternity clinic, told reporters in a rare appearance Monday that she felt "reborn" on waking June 3, 2005 after she had prayed for healing to John Paul. "There was a new strength inside me, and my body was rediscovering its vitality and fluidity," Simon-Pierre, appearing in good health, told reporters in the southern French city...

Carlos Martinelly-Montano was Scheduled for Deportation but Was Set Free by Feds; Homeland Security Refuses to Release Results of Internal Investigation Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 2, 2010, against the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain documents related to an internal DHS investigation of Carlos Martinelly-Montano, an illegal alien who struck and killed a Virginia nun in a drunk driving accident on August 1, 2010. Montano had been arrested on two prior drunk driving charges. He was placed in the custody of...

Don’t tell Mary Anne Marks the Catholic Church is an oppressive, misogynistic disaster. She knows better. And she’s got a Harvard degree, too. Miss Marks, a native of Queens, N.Y., graduated from Harvard University this past semester with an undergraduate degree in classics and English, delivering her commencement address in Latin. This fall, she begins a new life, discerning her future consecrated to Christ as a Catholic religious sister with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Mich. She and I are alumnae of the same high school, Dominican Academy, in Manhattan. Before heading to...

Callous treatment of a skilled drug-addicted nun-surgeon by her peer group in the Catholic Medical Missionary Order caused me, a dedicated nun, to become disillusioned. Within every person lies a marvelous adventure story of his life. Here is my story and the three torturous, separate paths I took on my journey toward peace and reconciliation with God. My first path was that of religion as a Medical Missionary Nun for thirteen years. Then I searched in vain for fulfillment as a United States Air Force nurse for six and a half years. Finally, on the third path as a married...

Illegal immigrant charged in fatal crash that kills nun! "The religious order that was home to three nuns whose car was hit Sunday morning by an alleged drunk driver in Northern Virginia said it is upset at what it views as the politicization of the incident." How about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, shall we do something about it NOW?

...snip... Two of the nuns -- Sister Charlotte Lange and Sister Connie Ruth Lupton -- remained in critical but stable condition last night; a third -- Sister Denise Mosier -- died at the crash site. ...snip... Saint Gertrude's website reported last night that Sister Charlotte "had some intestine removed and has some internal bleeding" and that Sister Connie "fractured her leg, ankle and wrist," had part of a thumb amputated and suffered internal injuries. Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night for Sister Denise.

The man suspected of drunken driving and killing a Catholic nun in Prince William County this weekend is an illegal immigrant who was awaiting deportation and who federal immigration authorities had released pending further proceedings, police said Monday. The man, Carlos Montano, a county resident, had been arrested by police twice before on drunk-driving charges, and on at least one of those occasions county police reported him to federal authorities. "We have determined that he is in the country illegally. He has been arrested by Prince William County Police in the past," said Officer Jonathan Perok, a police spokesman, who...

There was horror in Harlem on Tuesday when an 83-year-old nun was killed and four others were injured in police chase that turned into a mangled mess on Lenox Avenue. It was a horrendous, near head-on collision that happened around 9:30 a.m and killed Sister Mary Celine Graham. Police, investigating an armed robbery, had stopped a blue mini-van at 141st Street and Lenox Avenue. As they questioned the driver outside the vehicle, a passenger jumped behind the wheel and took off – and the police followed.

Today on Fox News, Neil Cavuto interviewed a Catholic Nun who said she supports the new Government health care bill because she thinks it is what Jesus would do and would have her do. ... she said "I speak for the 50 million people in the United States that don't have access and the 45 thousand people that die every year because they can't get healthcare." Sister Campbell went on to talk about a man who died of prostate cancer "because he didn't get care for his cancer early enough ... that's wrong, in the richest country on earth, we...

David Gibson Posted: 03/13/10 The head of the national association of Catholic hospitals, which holds great sway in the health care debate, threw her support Saturday behind the contested Senate reform bill in a move that could give a major boost to the legislation's prospects. But the endorsement of Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, could also put the nun and her organization at odds with the Catholic hierarchy, which continues to oppose the bill due to its provision on abortion coverage. As Politics Daily has reported, the Senate bill does not appear to allow for abortion...

One of Sister Mary's friends came to her defense today, saying the Lake County nun only wanted to protect the child she is accused of taking from her parents six months ago. Laura Maria Caballero, also known as Sister Mary, of Eustis thought the parents of the 2-year-old girl were not taking the best possible care of the child, the friend told the Orlando Sentinel. "Her whole life is giving," Hendrick said. "She's always in court fighting some battle for some kid." He has met the child she is accused of taking and said that Sister Mary would take her...

Three workmen rescued a nun moments before an Amtrak train hit and destroyed her car Monday in Lemont. Jason Wojdyla, 25, his dad John, and coworker Ryan Dimenza were installing air conditioning on a rooftop in downtown Lemont at 1 p.m. Monday when they spotted the nun crash her white Chevy Malibu. “She hit a fire hydrant and got stuck on the tracks,” Jason Wojdyla said. “We knew we had to do something.” The threesome ran downstairs to help. Though the nun, who Wojdyla estimated was in her 60s, was unhurt, they had to convince her to abandon her car...