A former nun's tell-all story which
details illicit relationships, sexual harassment and bullying in the
convent where she spent three decades is causing ructions in the
Catholic Church in the south Indian state of Kerala.
In Amen – an
autobiography of a nun, Sister Jesme says when she became a nun she
discovered priests were forcing novices to have sex with them. There
were also secret homosexual relationships among the nuns and at one
point she was forced into such a relationship by another nun who told
her she preferred this kind of arrangement as it ruled out the
possibility of pregnancy.
"I did not want to make this book
controversial. I want to express my feelings and to explain what
happened to me... I want people to know how I have suffered," she told
The Independent last night, speaking from the town of Kozhikode. "People
say that everything is OK, but I was in the convent and I want them to
know what goes on. I have concerns for others."
Sister Jesme, who quit last year as the
principal of a Catholic college in Thrissur, alleges senior nuns tried
to have her committed to a mental institution after she spoke out
against them.
In her book, she says that while
travelling through Bangalore, she was once directed to stay with a
purportedly pious priest who took her to a garden "and showed me several
pairs cuddling behind trees. He also gave me a sermon on the necessity
of physical love and described the illicit affairs that certain bishops
and priests had". The priest took her to his home, stripped off his
clothes and ordered her to do the same.
She also alleges that while senior
staff turned a blind eye to the actions of more experienced nuns,
novices were strongly punished, even for minor transgressions. She was
not allowed to go home after she learnt her father had died. "I was able
to see [the body of] my father barely 15 minutes before the funeral,"
she writes. "The [response] of the superiors was that the then senior
sisters were not even lucky enough to see the bodies of their parents."
When she resigned as a college
principal, she claimed convents had become "houses of torture", saying:
"The mental torture was unbearable. When I questioned the church's stand
on self-financing colleges and certain other issues, they accused me of
having mental problems. They have even sent me to a psychiatrist. There
are many nuns undergoing ill-treatment from the order, but they are
afraid of challenging it. The church is a formidable fortress."
The allegations are not the only
controversy to rock the Catholic Church in Kerala. Last summer, a
23-year-old novice committed suicide and left a note saying she had been
harassed by her Mother Superior. Reports suggest there have been a
number of similar suicides. And in November, police in Kerala arrested
two priests and a nun in connection with the killing of Sister Abhaya in
a notorious 1992 murder.
Last night, a spokesman for the
Syro-Malabar order of the Catholic Church, Dr Paul Thelakkat, dismissed
Sister Jesme's allegations as a "book of trivialities". "It's her
experiences, but these are things that might creep into a society of
communal living," he said. Asked if the church would be shocked by the
allegations, he replied: "Absolutely not. The church knows about these
things."
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