Pope Leo XIV meets with U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious

 

Pope Leo XIV with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious ( LCWR )

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• church
• synod
• synodality
• women
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• Consecrated Life
• United States
• migrants and refugees
• Pope Leo XIV

U.S. Sisters: Pope shares our concern for plight of immigrants

After meeting with Pope Leo XIV, the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious speaks to Vatican News about the situation of immigrants in the United States, synodality, and the involvement of women in the Church.

By Isabella H. de Carvalho

As the United States has been affected by polarization and tension regarding social and political issues, the Church in the country has tried to be a voice of peace and harmony.

An association that seeks to read and respond to the signs of the times is the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

Numbering approximately 30,000 members, it brings together leaders of Catholic women religious congregations and focuses on assisting them in carrying out their roles in the service of the Gospel and helping the Church respond to the changes affecting society.

On Thursday, March 26, Pope Leo XIV met with the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) during their annual trip to Rome and the Vatican. Among the topics discussed was the situation that his home country is going through at the moment.

When the Pope “listened to our story of the heart, about how painful it is right now in the United States in regards to the treatment of human beings, not even US citizens, just human beings themselves, I could see the pain on his face,” Sr. Carol Zinn, of the Sisters of St. Joseph and Executive Director of LWCR, told Vatican News.

The meeting with the Pope also included the three sisters that make up LCWR’s Presidency: the President, Sister Vicky Larson of the Presentation Sisters, the President-elect, Sister Debra Sciano of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and the former President, Sister Kathy Brazda of the Sisters of St. Joseph

The Gospel calls to welcome the stranger

Tensions have run high in the United States in the last year over the crackdown on immigration under the current government administration, with the situation reaching a boiling point in January 2026 after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens.

In November 2025, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops emphasized its concern over the treatment of immigrants in the country. That same month, Pope Leo expressed his support for their statement and called for migrants to be treated with human dignity and respect.

 

The LWCR and the Pope definitely have a “shared concern for the plight of the immigrant and the Gospel call to welcome the stranger,” Sr. Vicky Larson told Vatican News.

Sr. Zinn explained that the religious members of LCWR are “doing everything that they can to help at the grassroots level,” providing people with basic necessities such as baby food or shoes or accompanying them to court.

“We also work at the advocacy level of the federal government, so we have a foot in both worlds,” she continued, highlighting how the Pope thanked them for their work.

Promoting listening and relationships to contrast polarization

Sr. Zinn underlined that the LCWR’s work is focusing at the moment on the “transformation of consciousness,” asking “how do we transform the way we think about one another and then the words that we use when we speak to each other?”

“The issue of polarization is alive and well, not only in the United States, but it's pretty raw in the United States,” she continued. “There's a tendency to exclude the other, just about everybody, and to set up camps.”

Therefore, much of the organization’s work recently has focused on building relationships to counter polarization at the human level. “We're trying to learn the skills ourselves and then invite others—our partners in ministry, the boards of our sponsored ministries that are all lay people—into this kind of learning process also,” Sr. Zinn explained.

“One of the things that we need to do to work for justice is to work on relationships and build bridges across divides so that people understand one another and can work together,” added Sr. Larson.

Their endeavor is nourished by the fact that they are religious, as “consecrated life is really built around that concept of discernment and listening together,” Sr. Larson said.

The efforts to help people understand one another also build “on what Pope Francis called all of us to in calling the Synod on Synodality,” she noted. “I think he really gifted us with a call to look at the way that we are Church together, and that we communicate and share wisdom.”

Women and leadership in the Church: a cultural issue

The two LCWR leaders highlighted that synodality is entrenched in many of their organizational structures, saying the sisters come together to discern how to respond to the needs of the times.

They also emphasized that they “engaged in the synod process 1,000%” by sending feedback that contributed to the two sessions of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which took place in October 2023 and 2024.

Additionally, the two religious sisters explained they were very pleased to read paragraph 60 of the Final Document of the Synod, which insisted on women’s participation in the Church, highlighting that there should be no reason why women should not carry out leadership roles.

They also expressed their appreciation for the final report of one of the Synod’s Study Groups, which focused on women’s participation and leadership within the Church

“I’m pleased that the topic is being put on the table so that it can’t go away,” said Sr. Zinn. “I’m also pleased that there seems to be some understanding that's coming forth that this whole issue of the role of women in leadership in the Church is not theological, it's not ecclesial, it’s not historical, it’s not even canonical: It's cultural.”

“The conversations around the world, and certainly the United States, really need to begin at the cultural level,” she said.

Lastly, Sr. Zinn underlined the fact that both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV have appointed women to leadership roles in the Church, saying it shows their commitment to changing this culture regarding the role of women.

The Vatican and US nuns find common ground

Vatican ends crackdown on US nuns

Pope Francis, right, talks with a delegation of The Leadership Conference of Women Religious during an audience in the pontiff's studio at the Vatican, Thursday, April 16, 2015. The Vatican has announced the unexpected conclusion of a controversial overhaul of the main umbrella group of US nuns in a major shift in tone and treatment of American nuns under the social justice-minded Pope Francis. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP) (L'Osservatore Romano)

 

By The Associated Press The Associated Press
on April 17, 2015 at 12:57 PM

 

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has unexpectedly ended its controversial overhaul of the main umbrella group of U.S. nuns, cementing a shift in tone and treatment of the U.S. sisters under the social justice-minded Pope Francis.
The Vatican said Thursday it had accepted a final report on its investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and declared the "implementation of the mandate has been accomplished" nearly two years ahead of schedule. The umbrella group for women's religious orders had been accused of straying from church teaching.
The brief report stated the organization would have to ensure its publications have a "sound doctrinal foundation," and said steps were being taken for "safeguarding the theological integrity" of programs. But no major changes were announced and the direct Vatican oversight that the sisters considered a threat to their mission was over.
"I think there are still some questions about how this is going to play out, but that it concluded early was an overwhelming affirmation of what the sisters do," said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a religious studies professor at Manhattan College.
The report's tone stood in stark contrast to the 2012 Vatican reform mandate, which said the nuns' group was in a "grave" doctrinal crisis. Vatican officials said the Leadership Conference had over-emphasized social justice issues when they should have also been fighting abortion, had undermined church teaching on homosexuality and the priesthood, and had promoted "radical feminist" themes in their publications and choice of speakers. The nuns' group called the allegations "flawed." But Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle was appointed to conduct a top to bottom overhaul of the conference.
Just last year, the head of the Vatican's doctrine office, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, sharply rebuked the nuns' group for its "regrettable" attitude and behavior during the process. He accused the LCWR of being in "open provocation" with the Holy See and U.S. bishops because they planned to honor a theologian, Sister Elizabeth Johnson, whose work had drawn sharp criticism from the U.S. bishops.
But on Thursday, leaders of the umbrella organization and the Vatican officials in charge of the overhaul released statements of mutual respect, and the sisters met in Rome for nearly an hour with Pope Francis. The Vatican released a photo of the nuns sitting across a table from a warmly smiling Francis.
The turnabout suggested possible papal intervention to end the standoff on amicable grounds before Francis' high-profile trip to the United States in September. The investigation, and a separate but parallel review of all women's religious orders, prompted an outpouring of support from the public for the sisters, who oversee the lion's share of social service programs for the church.
The review of the Leadership Conference emerged from decades of tensions within the church over the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Many religious sisters shed their habits and traditional roles, taking on higher-level professional work in hospitals and schools, with sisters increasingly focused on social justice issues. Theological conservatives grew concerned that the sisters were becoming too secular and too political, instead of focusing on traditional prayer life and faith. The tensions worsened as the number of American nuns dwindled from about 160,000 in 1970, to less than 50,000 today, and church leaders searched for a way to stem the losses.
Conservative-minded Catholics argued a return to tradition would help.
The investigation of the sisters' group began about seven years ago under Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, a German theologian who spent a quarter century as the Vatican's doctrine watchdog, after complaints from conservative U.S. bishops and influential Catholics about the organization's doctrinal soundness.
The first sign of a different outcome for the nuns' group came in December, when the Vatican'sinvestigation of all women's religious orders ended with sweeping praise for the sisters for their selfless work caring for the poor.
On Thursday, Mueller said in a statement he was confident that the LCWR is now clear in its mission of showing its members a Christ-centered vision of religious life that is "rooted in the tradition of the church." Sister Sharon Holland, president of the nuns' group, said in a statement the process had been "long and challenging" but "we learned that what we hold in common is much greater than any of our differences."
The Vatican asked the sisters and church officials not to comment on the report for a month.
"Given the current moment in the church, with Francis emphasizing mercy and not judging and trying to see the best of what people are doing, they had to find a quiet way out of this," said Michele Dillon, a University of New Hampshire sociologist specializing in the Catholic Church. "What you'd love to hear directly from LCWR leaders is what exactly this oversight means. Who decides what's really the authentic doctrine?"

Vatican just about had it with disobedient and unfaithful nuns. LCWR leadership making it tough for faithful nuns to be faithful.

Vatican Publicly Rebukes Dissenting Nuns

by Anne Hendershott

Like recalcitrant teenagers, taunting their teachers with their latest refusal to submit to authority, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—an organization that represents more than 80 percent of the more than 50,000 Catholic women religious in the United States—has finally been publicly rebuked by the Vatican.  After several decades of trying to persuade the intractable women religious to comply with the teachings of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a strong statement on April 30, 2014, demanding that the group return to the “ecclesial center of faith in Christ Jesus the Lord.”

For decades, the LCWR has refused all calls for renewal by the bishops. Promoting women’s ordination, reproductive rights, and an “end to patriarchy,” the LCWR has refused to comply with Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata entitled Sentire Cum Ecclesia—“to think with the Church.”
More than six years ago, in response to the decades-long defiance by the LCWR, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith initiated a Doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR on April 8, 2008. The concern of the doctrinal Assessment was to assist the LCWR in implementing “an ecclesiology of communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the church as the essential foundation for its important service to religious Communities and to all those in consecrated life.”   Three major areas of concern were given by the CDF as motivating their decision to initiate the Assessment including: concerns about the speakers at the LCWR Assemblies; the policies of corporate dissent on issues like women’s ordination; and the prevalence of radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith in some of the programs and presentations sponsored by the LCWR.
These three areas of concern remain intact today.  In fact, it appears that things may have actually gotten worse within the LCWR as Cardinal Muller concluded that a “de facto movement beyond the Church and sound Christian faith has already occurred” in the LCWR.  For evidence of such dissidence, Cardinal Muller wrote that he was “saddened” to learn that the sisters had decided to give the 2014 Outstanding Leadership Award to Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, a Fordham University theologian who has been criticized by the bishops of the United States because of the gravity of the doctrinal errors in her book, The Quest for the Living God.  Cardinal Muller advised the LCWR that their decision to honor Johnson was an “open provocation against the Holy See … further alienating the LCWR from the bishops as well.”
The choice of Sr. Johnson as honoree was clearly calculated to demonstrate the LCWR’s contempt for the teaching authority of the bishops.  More than three years ago, on March 24, 2011, the USCCB Committee on Doctrine published a “Statement on Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, by Sister Elizabeth Johnson,” which concluded that Johnson’s book does not adequately express the faith of the Church. And, although the USCCB Committee wrote that they made no attempt to judge the intention of the author, the book created a “particular pastoral concern” because it was written for a broad audience—and was being adopted as a textbook for the study of the doctrine of God—rather than a more narrow scholarly audience.  As the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, the bishops have a responsibility to ensure that the truth of the teachings of the Church are presented accurately.  Honoring Sister Elizabeth Johnson—a theologian who has devoted her career to denouncing as a “tool of patriarchal oppression” the traditional masculine language for God, including God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was itself a statement of resistance.
In addition to the honors given to Sr. Johnson, Cardinal Muller was especially concerned with what he called a “focalizing of attention with the LCWR around the concept of Conscious Evolution.”  Cardinal Muller writes: “Since Barbara Marx Hubbard addressed the Assembly on this topic two years ago, every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way.  Issues of Occasional Papers have been devoted to it, and we have even seen some religious Institutes modify their directional statements to incorporate concepts and undeveloped terms from Conscious Evolution.”  For Cardinal Muller, such a focus has “robbed the religious of the ability truly to sentire cum Ecclesia…. The fundamental theses of Conscious Evolution are opposed to Christian Revelation and, when taken unreflectively, lead almost necessarily to fundamental errors regarding the omnipotence of God, the Incarnation of Christ, the reality of Original Sin, the necessity of salvation and the definitive nature of the salvific action of Christ in the Paschal Mystery.”
Dismissing the “new fad” of Conscious Evolution as nothing more than a resurgence of the “bitter fruit” of the Gnostic tradition, Cardinal Muller concludes that such a focus “does not offer anything which will nourish religious life as a privileged and prophetic witness rooted in Christ revealing divine love to a wounded world. It does not present the treasure beyond price for which new generations of young women will leave all to follow Christ.”
Cardinal Muller knows that the “charismatic vitality of religious life can only flourish within the ecclesial faith of the Church.” Faithful Catholics have known this for decades and have been bewildered by the lack of attention given by the bishops to the dissidents within the women religious communities—especially on Catholic college campuses and beyond.
Perhaps it is finally time to stop cajoling and flattering the dissident women religious.  While well meaning, the constant accolades given to these women for their many sacrifices on behalf of the Church is misplaced.  In 2013, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the Vatican apostolic nuncio to the United States showered praise on the annual gathering of the LCWR in Orlando Florida—claiming that the Holy Father “is most thankful to you for all the good you have done throughout the years…. By the sacrifice of your own lives you have been deeply touching other people’s lives, bringing hope and healing, helping to form minds and hearts in the image of Jesus.”
Likewise, the well-meaning Seattle archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who had been appointed the apostolic delegate, charged by the Vatican with helping to bring the LCWR back into communion with the Church, told the 2013 annual Assembly that he was there as “your brother and friend.”  Concluding that “we have developed a wonderful respect for each other and, yes, I would say a friendship with one another,” Archbishop Sartain had to be disappointed to find that the hand of friendship he extended to them was all for naught given that the Assembly chose to defy the bishops by honoring someone like Sr. Johnson the very next year.
Earlier this week, Archbishop Sartain stated that he is in “complete agreement” with Cardinal Muller’s statement.  And, although Archbishop Sartain continues to maintain that he has “developed a very good relationship” with the women religious during  his time as Archbishop Delegate, he has promised to work more closely to address concerns regarding significant areas of the Doctrinal Assessment that have not been addressed; he has “asked for clearer signs of collaboration with the Holy See and with me as Archbishop Delegate.”  Archbishop Sartain will attend the August, 2014  LCWR gathering in Nashville as the Assembly gives its award to Sister Elizabeth Johnson—providing a powerful witness to the Truth of Catholic teachings in the midst of the accolades given to the heretical writings of Sr. Johnson.  In doing so, Archbishop Sartain will truly be functioning as a brother and friend—dedicated to helping the members of the LCWR begin to recover their faith in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Vatican to American nuns(LCWR): reform now

In hard-hitting document Vatican launches clean-up of feminist nuns in United States
by John-Henry Westen
Wed Apr 18, 2012

WASHINGTON, April 18, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has launched a 5-year reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the association of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States representing more than 80 percent of the 57,000 women religious (nuns) in the country.

Based on a 2008 investigation into the nuns, the Vatican evaluation was candid, noting, “The current doctrinal and pastoral situation of the LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern.”

The CDF doctrinal assessment, released today, criticized positions espoused at LCWR annual assemblies and in its literature as well as the absence of support from LCWR for Church teaching on pro-life issues, women’s ordination and homosexuality.

The CDF said that the documentation “reveals that, while there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.”

“Further,” the CDF report said, “issues of crucial importance in the life of the Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching. Moreover, occasional public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the Bishops, who are the Church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”

The CDF said, “The Assessment reveals serious doctrinal problems which affect many in Consecrated life,” calling it a crisis “characterized by a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration.”

The document listed the principal findings of the LCWR doctrinal assessment.

On LCWR annual assemblies, it said, “The talks, while not scholarly theological discourses per se, do have significant doctrinal and moral content with implications which often contradict or ignore magisterial teaching.”

On formation of religious superiors and formators, the CDF said, “Many of the materials prepared by the LCWR for these purposes (Occasional Papers, Systems Thinking Handbook) do not have a sufficient doctrinal foundation. These materials recommend strategies for dialogue, for example when sisters disagree about basic matters of Catholic faith or moral practice, but it is not clear whether this dialogue is directed towards reception of Church teaching.”

The Vatican said that it has appointed Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle as its Archbishop Delegate for the initiative. Bishop Leonard Blair and Bishop Thomas John Paprocki also were named to assist in this effort.

The Vatican is attempting to present the measure as a friendly renewal. However, even the initial announcement of the assessment in 2008 was greeted with severe hostility by leftist nuns in the U.S. The sternly-worded assessment document is not likely to be received with any greater enthusiasm.

The Prefect of the CDF Cardinal William Levada noted that the assessment is “aimed at fostering a patient and collaborative renewal.”

Archbishop Sartain commented on his new role saying, “I am honored that the CDF has entrusted this important and sensitive work to me, because the ministry of religious sisters, especially here in the United States, is deeply respected and paramount to the mission of the Church. Just as the LCWR can be a vital resource in many ways for its members, I hope to be of service to them and to the Holy See as we face areas of concern to all.”

The intransigence and betrayal of many of the women religious in the United states toward Catholic values have been keenly felt in recent months by Catholic bishops – particularly in the fight over religious freedom and abortion funding in President Obama’s health care law, in which religious sisters have played a key role, in Obama’s favor.

That betrayal has also been registered in the Vatican. Cardinal Raymond Burke head of the Vatican’s highest court - the Apostolic Signitura - in a speech earlier this year, denounced “the public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious.”

Burke asked: “Who ever could have imagined that religious congregations of pontifical right would openly organize to resist and attempt to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the Vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience?”

“Who could imagine that consecrated religious would openly, and in defiance of the bishops as successors of the Apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violate the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenets, the safeguarding and promoting of innocent and defenseless life, and fail to safeguard the demands of free exercise of conscience for healthcare workers?” he added.