Priests are treating nuns like servants, says CBCI president

Just days after an autobiography by a former nun caused embarrassment to the Catholic Church, the head of bishops council in the country acknowledged that nuns are humiliated by priests and live in constant fear.

The president of Catholic Bishops Council of India, Cardinal Varkey Vithayatil, in his biography titled 'Straight from the heart', rued that "priests are treating nuns like servants, making them wash their clothes, prepare their food, wash the churches, etc and that too without getting paid."

These are all unjust ways of treating the women religious, he said, adding they must be freed from this "pitiable situation".

"I would say to a great extent our nuns are not emancipated women. They are often kept under submission by the fear of revenge by priests. That's how the priests get away with whatever humiliation they heap upon them. It is a pitiable situation from which somebody has to liberate them,'' the 82-year-old cardinal tells his biographer Paul Thelakat, the spokesperson of Syro-Malabar Church.

In addition, expressing his views on religious conversion in the country, the cardinal conceded that "there is some truth in their contention that certain Christian groups are going about making mass conversions without any real conversion of heart.''

He further pointed that church does not welcome conversion of people "who have no faith and become Christians only nominally''.

Last month, a former nun in her autobiography 'Amen - Oru Kanyasthreeyude Atmakatha' (Amen Autobiography of a Nun), recounted her odd and agonising experiences for 30 years of convent life.

Her allegations of being subjected to sexual exploitation and mental torture by her superiors, shocked the Catholic community in the country

The Catholic Church already reeling under several controversies is yet to come out of the Abhaya murder case and a recent suicide of a nun in Kerala.

The state of Kerala contributes the highest number of nuns in the whole country. According to Conference of Religious India's (CRI) statistics, the state has 31,514 nuns while the total number in India is 1,00,430.