VATICAN CITY, April 19 (UPI) -- The Vatican announced a group representing U.S. sisters and nuns will be reformed to ensure it follows Catholic teaching.
A review will examine the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women's ordination as priests and homosexuality, Catholic News Service reported.
The Maryland-based umbrella group represents about 80 percent of the estimated 57,000 U.S. Catholic sisters and nuns.
Among the most controversial issues in a Vatican "doctrinal assessment" were medical and sexual ethics in the United States, CNS said.
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"While there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the church's social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States," the Vatican said. "Further, issues of crucial importance in the life of the church and society, such as the church's biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes church teaching."
Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, with assistance from two other bishops, will provide "review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work" of the LCWR and tap into the advice of fellow bishops, women religious and other experts, the Vatican said Wednesday.
The Vatican also had praise for LCWR, citing "great contributions of women religious to the church in the United States as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals and institutions of support for the poor, which have been founded and staffed by religious over the years," and said the Vatican "does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of women religious" in the LCWR's member congregations.
