More Young Women Find a Calling in Catholic Order
12 January 2011
The average age of the church’s serving priests and nuns is 70 and rising. But some Catholic orders in the United States are successfully attracting new members.
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
For years, the Catholic Church in America has struggled to find new clergy. The average age of priests and nuns is seventy and rising. But some Catholic orders are having more success than others.
The Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia are mainly a teaching order. They are based at a convent in Nashville, Tennessee. And they just celebrated their one hundred fiftieth year.
The sisters are active across the United States and in Australia. There, they teach more than thirteen thousand students in thirty-four schools.
Today, Saint Cecilia's has its largest number of postulants in many years. A postulant is a candidate for admission into a religious order.
Sister Catherine Marie, a spokeswoman, says the current group of first-year students represents ten percent of the whole order.
SISTER CATHERINE MARIE: "There are two hundred seventy of us and our growth of late has been rather extensive. This year we had twenty-seven young women enter. Last year, it was twenty-three. Great blessings to us."
Nearly one-third of the women in the order are under thirty.
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