The Vatican women's magazine talks about the abuses done to the nuns

The Vatican women's magazine is blaming the drastic drop in the number of nuns around the world in part on their poor working conditions and on the sexual abuse and abuse of power suffered by the hands of priests and their superiors.

"Women Church World" has dedicated its February issue to burnout, trauma and exploitation experienced by religious sisters and the way the church is realizing that it must change its way if it wants to attract new vocations.

The magazine published Thursday revealed that Francis had authorized the creation of a special house in Rome for the nuns who had been expelled from their orders and almost left on the street, some forced into prostitution to survive.

"There are some really difficult cases, in which the superiors kept the identity documents of the sisters who wanted to leave the convent, or who were expelled," said the head of the congregation for religious orders of the Vatican, Cardinal Joao Braz of Aviz magazine.

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"There have also been cases of prostitution to be able to provide for themselves," he said. "These are ex-nuns!"

“We are dealing with injured people and for whom we must rebuild trust. We must change this attitude of rejection, the temptation to ignore these people and say 'you are no longer our problem.' ' "

"This absolutely must change," he said.

The Catholic Church has seen a continuous free fall in the number of nuns around the world, while older sisters die and less young people take their places. Vatican statistics for 2016 show that the number of sisters decreased by 10.885 the previous year to 659.445 globally. Ten years earlier, there were 753.400 nuns worldwide, which means that the Catholic Church had poured out nearly 100.000 nuns over a decade.

European nuns regularly pay the worst, Latin American numbers are stable and the number is increasing in Asia and Africa.

The magazine has made headlines in the past with articles exposing the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and conditions similar to those of slaves where nuns are often forced to work without contracts and doing humble jobs such as cleaning the cardinals.

The drop in their numbers led to the closure of convents in Europe and the consequent battle between the remaining diocesan nuns and bishops or the Vatican for the control of their assets.

Braz insisted that the goods do not belong to the nuns themselves, but to the whole church, and asked for a new culture of exchange, so that "five nuns do not manage a huge patrimony" while other orders fail.

Braz acknowledged the problem of nuns victims of sexual abuse by priests and bishops. But he said recently, his office has also heard of nuns who have been mistreated by other nuns, including a congregation with nine cases.

There have also been cases of serious abuse of power.

“We have had cases, not many fortunately, of superiors who once elected refused to resign. They respected all the rules, "he said. "And in the communities there are sisters who tend to obey blindly, without saying what they think."

The international umbrella group of nuns began to speak more vigorously about the abuses of the nuns and formed a commission with its male counterpart to take better care of their members.