On September 14, 1965, I arrived in Rome, Italy to live with our Sisters
at Villa Francesca, our house of studies, on the Aventine. The
Congregation sent me there to study theology at Regina Mundi, the international
school for Sisters and other lay women. While it was an honor to be
chosen, I was attending an exciting avant garde course for a Masters in
Religious Education at the Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New
York. The professors were from various disciplines including Sacred
Scripture, Christ figures in Film, Moral Theology, etc. I would have to leave
that Course unfinished to go to Regina Mundi. I thought Regina Mundi
would be little more than the religious education I had received long
ago.
However, something exciting had been happening in Rome from
1962-65. Pope John XXIII had called for Vatican Council II and pushed
open the windows of the Church to new understandings and new
visions. I arrived in Rome in time to attend the closing liturgy of
the Council. The documents of the Council influenced Regina Mundi to
update all of its courses! Some of the periti, experts, of the Council
came and spoke to the students.
An American woman with a Villa in Rome invited Religious Superiors to
come to her Villa to hear some of the periti. Sister Maria Teresa Romeo
was our local Superior at Villa Francesca. Because I was studying
theology, she invited me to go to these gatherings with her. I remember
especially being thrilled to listen to the famous Cardinal Suenens from Belgium and Father Bernard Haring, CSSR from Germany who were both periti
of the Council.
The Council documents began to come out on papers to the Religious
Superiors and I had a chance to read them. It was an exciting and
hope-filled time. Back in the United States, the documents of
Vatican II were having both positive and negative effects on the Church.
The Council called for changes in the life of the Church. There were
documents on the liturgy, ecumenism, the Bible, religious life and more. Perfectae
Caritatis, The Perfection of Charity, called Religious women and men to return
to their sources and renew their lives. Gaudiem et Spes, The Church in
the Modern World, called the Church to be open to the joys and hopes of all
people. Each document called for some type of change. Those who saw
the value of the changes, embraced them and moved ahead. It was
notable, that the religious congregations made the changes called for, while
education for change in dioceses and parishes was at best slow to come and in some
places, resisted.
Religious congregations were mandated to have a Renewal Chapter. We
had one in 1968, in Frascati, Rome. Our Congregation reverently and
obediently, but not without some opposition among us, went back to our Sources:
the Gospel, St. Francis and Clare, and the Franciscan Movement, Blessed
Frances Schervier and the sources of our Congregation. We revised our
Constitution and taking our direction from the Gospels, where the new
Christians were called Followers of the Way, we named it, Our Gospel Way of
Life. Sister Innocenta Donnelly, followed by Sister Rose Margaret
Delaney, courageously led the Congregation into the renewal we were called
to.
To recall what was happening in the place that I returned to, i.e., the
United States, our elected leadership led us in a renewal process. We
collaborated with other Franciscan Congregations seeking renewal of the
Franciscan way of life. We called on outstanding Franciscan scholars and
leaders in spirituality to assist us. There were several. Two that
I remember in particular were Sister Maristell Schanen, a spiritual leader from
the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Minn., (deceased 7/6/12),
and the historian, Father David Flood, OFM. Others will be remembered by
my contemporaries. In the Brooklyn Diocese, we collaborated with the
Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, with whom we have a long history.
Those years of studying our Sources and our steps toward renewal made me
grateful to be in a small but forward looking Congregation. There were
difficult days when some of our sisters chose to leave the Congregation.
At least for some, the positive side of this was that they were able to
see the possibility of a different way of life for them. Getting to
know our Franciscan Sources made me grateful to be part of the wider Franciscan
Family.
Sister Bernadette Sullivan, SFP
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