A Vatican magazine has fired off an extraordinary criticism of the Catholic Church and how it treats nuns in the workplace, quoting anonymous sisters on how they exploited as cheap labor.
In an article, "The (Nearly) Free Work of Sisters," by French journalist Marie-Lucile Kubacki, a nun identified only as Sister Marie says, "In the eyes of Jesus we are all children of God, but in their concrete life some nuns do not live this, and they experience great confusion and discomfort."
Other nuns tell how they work for little or no money for cardinals, bishops and priests, the "men of the church, waking at dawn to prepare breakfast and going to sleep once dinner is served, the house in order and the laundry cleaned and ironed."
The article appears in the March edition of Women Church World, a monthly insert in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Excerpts were translated by The New York Times and The Guardian.
The author says what saddened one of the nuns she spoke with the most was that sisters "are rarely invited to sit at the table they serve." Instead, they are banished to the kitchen.
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