Sisters Claire E. Regan, center, and Dorothy Metz, right, members of the leadership council of the Sisters of Charity, stand in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, a private Catholic college in the Bronx borough of New York, on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. They had taken their vows in the chapel.
“We just held up that book and said, ‘They’re here with us.’ recognition that we’ve all done what God asked us to do,” said Egan, sitting in that same meeting room days after the announcement. That drop reflects a global trend. The number of Catholic nuns is in a free fall as fewer young women devote their lives to religious orders.
Sister Donna Dodge, the congregation president, recounted a favorite memory — the unsolicited praise that followed them as they marched along Fifth Avenue in a St. Patrick's Day parade. But members of the Sisters of Charity in New York had hoped for more, said O'Brien, who lamented that women still cannot be Catholic priests.
“When something like this is looming, you think, ‘What did we do wrong?’" O'Brien said. “I’m sure there were many times when we questioned all those changes that we made back in the seventies — the habit, leaving schools, going into other various ministries.” Today, some of the nuns offer ministry to sisters in retirement. Others help with food preparation and distribution at pantries, work at the college, or travel to the order’s mission in Guatemala.