Religious sisters in Latin America: identity, challenges, and perspectives

Abstract

The writing analyzes trends in the life and ministry of women in Latin America. It provides a quantitative sketch identifying religious sisters’ trends from 1970 to 2017 and compares them both with other regions and with Latin American priests. It exams three patterns, all of them concluding with declining numbers at the beginning of the 2000s.The analysis is grounded on a database that was built using the Statistical Yearbook of the Church. The article also examines the social space women religious have occupied in the Latin American countries over time; the construction of their social and ecclesial identity; and their relationship with Catholic consecrated men. Finally, it addresses their current challenges deepening in three issues that account for their crisis: first, the persistent clerical culture that permeates the Church’s dynamics; second, the disputes stirred up around decisions on their works and expressions of the past but not of their present; and third, the building of their present identity through the complex process of finding inspiration in the confrontation of their foundational sources with present pastoral theological approaches, as those framed within feminist theologies. Unearthing clues to better understanding the Latin American sisters’ crisis is a thread that runs throughout the analysis.