A reversal of faith: When the ‘missionized’ become the missionaries

By Anne Cohen

ROME — In a dark, empty chapel inside the convent of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary on Via Giusti in the Center of Rome. Sister Nzenzili Mbom kneels to cross herself before a large marble tomb. The tomb bears the remains of the nun who founded the missionary order in 1877 and has since become known as Mother Mary of the Passion. Mbom’s devotions are a rare solemn moment for someone who always has a joke on her lips and whose booming laugh resonates through the echoing corridors of the convent.

In the dimly lit room, the only source of color is Mbom herself. Dressed in traditional Congolese clothing rather than a regular nun’s habit, the bright yellows and reds shine in contrast with the somber wooden pews. As she slowly rises, Mbom reaches out her hand, and lets it rest on the tomb, smiling as she feels the cool touch of the marble.

Mbom is, as the name of her order makes clear, a missionary. But these are not the missionaries as we have come to know them in memoirs and movies: strict nuns and priests carrying the banner of colonialism to unknown, “savage” lands. These are modern missionaries for a brave new world. With vocations on the decline in Western countries, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary seem to have been prescient in their recruitment tactics, offering a possible model for the future.

In the last couple of decades, religious orders have been facing a vocational crisis. Increased secularization in Europe and North America has caused a drop in the number of men and women choosing to commit to religious life. In his Christmas greeting to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict decried what he called a European crisis of faith. “ Regular church goers are growing older all the time and their number is constantly diminishing; that recruitment of priests is stagnating,” he said. What then do we do?” he went on to ask. “There is no doubt that a variety of things need to be done. But action alone fails to resolve the matter. The essence of the crisis of the church in Europe is a crisis of faith.”

The Pope went on to explain that a different story was being played out in Africa and Asia. “On this point, the encounter with Africa’s joyful passion for faith brought great encouragement,” said the Pope in the same speech. “None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent here, none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity was detectable there.”

The story of African faith can be seen in the life of Mbom. She was born into a Catholic family in Congo-Kinshasa when it was still Zaire and knew from an early age that she would join a religious order. “ My mother would have wanted to be a religious but she met my father so that dream ended. But she always had the hope that one of her children would be a nun or a priest. Little by little, as I grew up, I started to feel the call.” Mbombo joined the local Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (one of the first communities to be founded, in 1896). They paid for studies in theology until she took her perpetual vows and prepared to go on mission. In the 49 years since she joined a religious order, she has lived in the Philippines, in Kenya, in the Congo, and more recently, in the United States and in Rome. At 71, Mbom is still ready to serve. She speaks six languages and serves on the board of the Service of Documentation and Study , founded as a forum for those who have chosen consecrated life to exchange and examine their goals.

Since the Second Vatican Council, in session from 1962 to 1965, the “mission,” as it is called, has changed. In chapter two of the Decree on the mission activity of the Church, the Council explained the new expectations for missionaries abroad. It does so in the male-centered language of the time, although the teaching applies to women as well as men. “In order that they may bear more fruitful witness to Christ,” the decree states, “let them acknowledge themselves to be members of the group of men among whom they live; let them share in cultural and social life by the various undertakings and enterprises of human living; let them be familiar with their national and religious traditions.” The Church no longer waits for people to seek it out, the Church goes to the people armed with local culture, dress and traditions.

According to Sister Mary Motte, herself a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary community and a theological scholar, this was the result of the melding of a number of outside forces. “In many ways you can say that there has been a coinciding of events in the last half of the 20th century,” she said. “ You have the end of colonialism and the developments in theology. Events don’t happen in isolation. Events that were happening in the world like the end of colonialism certainly had an effect on Vatican II.”

The Franciscan Missionaries are no stranger to this phenomenon. Originally founded in 1877 in India by a French nun by the name of Helene Marie Philippine de Chapotin de Neuville, now known as Mary of the Passion, the order now has a presence in 77 countries and represents 78 nationalities. From the very beginning, Mary of the Passion envisioned an order that would become a part of whatever country it was in, both in terms of local recruitment, and the assimilation of outsiders on mission. The way the order is organized is essential to this process. Each country is a province with its own administration and decisional power, making it somewhat autonomous from the mother general and administrative council in Rome. This enables each province to take the necessary measures that suit individual needs.

But what binds these women from different traditions, backgrounds, and ethnicities together? The answer is charism, or the creed, which serves as the backbone of the order. In the case of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, the charism is one of tolerance and total devotion to Christ.

That concern for local traditions and way of life is part of what drew Mbom to the order. There were nuns in her village, but they were an order of Belgian nuns, not open to local vocations. The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary were the only ones in the region accepting African nuns. This was in 1963. The Second Vatican Council had just started its work, and the sisters still wore the traditional grey habits. Today, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary adopt the traditional dress of the country in which they reside: in India, they wear saffron colored saris, in Africa they wear the colorful headscarf.

Today however, missionary work has its eyes on the the West, creating the strange phenomenon in which nuns from Africa and Asia come to Europe and North America to spread the message instead of the other way around.  A study of religious vocations conducted in 2011 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found that 30 percent of the respondents  were born outside of the United States and that the most common countries of origin were Vietnam, the Philippines and India.

For Sister Mary Petrosky, the former head of the United States “province”, recruitment of the young, wherever they may be, is the way to keep the Church alive. This transition is both necessary and desirable; it proves the strength and adaptability of the Church. “Asia and Africa are the continents where we have the most sisters. And young sisters. It used to be Europe. France had three or four provinces in the beginning. Now India has the largest number of sisters. I think it’s wonderful, I really think that’s the way it should be.”

According to Motte, another pivotal moment occurred in 1972, when the Service of Documentation and Study was founded to create more dialogue between religious orders all over the world.  That same year, the general chapter meeting of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary ruled that provinces were limited to one country, administered by local religious. Before that, ex-colonies had been grouped in with their mother country, leaving Pakistan to be administered by England and Vietnam by France. “Before that,” said Motte, “most missionaries were white and from the West.” This is definitely no longer the case.  The meeting of religious order group this year will focus on the challenges facing Latin America in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. Next year, the focus will be Europe and the United States. “It’s the West that needs to be evangelized,” said Mbom. In the heart of Rome, capital of the Catholic world, nuns from all over the world congregate to spread the word of God to those who seem to have become immune to it.

Lunchtime in the dining room of the Via Giusti convent is, in Mbombo’s words, “like the United Nations.” As the 27 Sisters, representing 17 nationalities, sat down to a lunch of pasta, salad and fruit, it was easy to see what she means; there were only a handful of Italian-born nuns. They may be located in the heart of Rome, but only the rare word in Italian is heard. Before touching the food, everyone in the room stood to pray in French, the mother tongue of the order’s founder.  To Mbom’s right was Sister Araceli Castano from Columbia. She has been on mission in Morocco and Paraguay. To her left was Sister Lucie Joseph from India. She spent 10 years in Russia. Still another sister across the table from Mbom was from Mauritius, and spent 20 years on mission in the Congo. Mbombo is not impressed. “That’s not so much for a missionary life,” she said. “Some people have gone for 40, 50 years.”

This international phenomenon is not restricted to Italy. A dinner scene at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary convent on West 97th street in Manhattan, where Petrosky lives, offers a similar view. In the basement kitchen,  a big meal had been planned for the feast of the Annunciation. And, as was fitting in light of those partaking in the feast, the meal had an international theme: homemade wonton soup prepared by a friend of Sister Gina, from China,  Spanish rice from Sister Maria Theresa’s home country, and French cookies. The main dessert however, was purely American: three flavors of ice cream drowned in chocolate sauce. Interestingly, the communities in the West reflect the diversity and multiculturality that has come define countries like the United States. Everyone learns from each other. They celebrate each other’s holidays, as well as holidays specific to the country they are in, like Thanksgiving or Saint Patrick’s day.

Petrosky is now the house mother. She is one of three American born nuns out of the eight living in the convent. Unlike the motherhouse in Rome, this is a small community. Like Mbom, (with whom she is good friends) she remembers the days before the Second Vatican Council. However, she made the opposite journey, coming from the West rather than towards it.

Petrosky, 80, has been a nun since 1951. She turned 35 on the ship going to Papua New Guinea, on her first mission in 1967. This back in the days in which Franciscan Missionaries of Mary had no say in where they were sent. Back when, as Petrovsky put it, “I had the first masters degree in social work in Papua New Guinea. The whole country!”

Today, countries that once needed outside help to set up schools, counseling and healthcare infrastructure can now operate these institutions without interference. While the goal of the mission remains to spread the good news, the means to do so have evolved. Franciscan Missionaries of Mary find it essential to hold a presence among the people wherever they are. Once an order of semi-cloistered nuns, they are now nurses, social workers, UN representatives, and teachers.

“In the early days of missionary life, it was very much connected to the colonial powers,” explained Petrosky. “The French sisters and priests went to the colonies of France, the British went to the colonies of England. And then the people looked up to the nuns and the priests as they would provide for them. ‘Rice Christians’ we used to call them. If you have enough rice, they’ve joined the Church. We don’t want anybody to join the Church because of food or what we give them. We no longer go in as the ‘We’re the great givers!’ And they stand there with their hands open and thank us. It’s not that. We thank them for letting us be with them.”

As in the rest of the world, the religious community must embrace globalization if it wants to thrive. The Church has to adapt and learn from its own communities as well as others. “Obviously the Church grows,” says Motte “ And because the Church grows, there are vocations. What has happened in the last 50 years has been the internationalization of the religious community, held together by charism.”

Motte’s experience on mission is the perfect example of a potential change in mentality. As a young missionary, she was sent to Lebanon, and lived in a convent in the mountains outside of Beirut. She spoke no Arabic. Her job was to get water for the community every morning. To do that, she had to walk half an hour to the nearest well. Every day, she would encounter a group of Lebanese women. “We didn’t have a common language,” she said. “They invited me, welcomed me into their group. The older women communicated to me that she was going to teach me some Arabic. Every morning when I came, I had to pass the exam.”

Eventually, the women invited Motte into their compound. This had never happened before. Motte and another sister were shown how to make traditional flat bread. Their kindness and hospitality were proof for Motte that the mission is more than just speech, it is in actions. It is an exchange. “Who were the missionaries?” she asked. “They were the missionaries! They welcomed me, they shared their language with me, they shared their water with me, they shared their bread with me. It’s in actions like these that we realize how God is acting in our world.”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 3:25 pm. It is filed under Anne Cohen, Features, View from Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.