Sally Axworthy (@SallyAxworthy), UK Ambassador in the Holy See, is doing a blog all this week about British women religious in Rome: this is the first one on Women Religious
We usually think of the Catholic Church as a male-dominated organisation because priests staff the hierarchy. But, as I have been discovering in my first six months in Rome, women play an important role in the Church. Indeed there are nearly twice as many religious sisters (800,000) as there are Catholic priests (around 400,000) – far more than religious brothers (55,000) – and they are doing some of the Church’s most important work. Sisters are taking in victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, working with victims of rape in conflict zones, and teaching children in some of the world’s most deprived areas.
So to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, I have met some of the religious sisters in Rome to find out what they do. Each day this week I will publish a profile of a different senior British religious sister. This blog draws out some of the common threads.