Catholic women’s religious institutes—globally experiencing a 22.1% decline in numbers globally—face tenuous futures. Mitigating these trends to survive and thrive may depend upon learning from each other, across continents and cultures, to address their greatest mutual challenge: Aging, infirm populations.
This is the premise of a two-year research project (May 2021 to May 2023) CARA conducted in collaboration with Kenyan and Mexican researchers. Funding was provided by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters’ Initiative for supporting this research.
In Kenya, Assumption Sisters of Nairobi Sister Candida Mukundi, Director of the Center for Research in Religious Life & Apostolate (CERRA-Africa), coordinated researchers working in Zambia, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda (Malawi reports are forthcoming). Missionaries of the Holy Spirit priest Father Luis Falco of the order’s Proyecto Cruces Missioneros del Epiritu Santu or the Holy Spirit Missionary Crosses Project led the team conducting research in Mexico.
Beyond the valuable information the studies uncovered, this research was noteworthy because, as we noted in the CARA September 2022 special report “Care of Elderly and Infirm Sisters among Catholic Sisters,” little has been documented about the care provided to older sisters.
This partnership’s international and intercultural nature also distinguishes the initiative. In their report “The Needs of Elder Sisters in Mexico's Women Religious Congregations,” researchers describe this approach’s value: “Working in this international team has been a great enrichment because some approaches, questioned issues and perspectives are quite similar and even complementary, in some other cases, the perspectives are different, and each team has valued their own differences.”
It’s also important to note while numbers of women religious worldwide are declining generally, in Africa, the number of women joining religious institutes has grown more than 49 percent. This increase almost offsets the precipitous decline of North American sisters of more than 51 percent.
This context informed the research’s three objectives:
1. To document institutes’ perceived needs to care for their elderly, infirm members in order to manifest the institutes’ current and projected needs more broadly;
2. To document number of people entering religious institutes in 2021 and 2022 and identify their demographics in order to encourage institutes to become more proactive in their vocation efforts;
3. To form Advisory Committees in Kenya and Mexico to recommend next research steps or suggest activities or programs to deal with identified needs. These committees will help engender greater awareness of the challenges facing elderly sisters and foster activities and programs that are developed, funded and implemented to remediate these challenges.
Because little has been documented about the care of older, infirm sisters, it isn’t surprising women’s religious institutions haven’t been, with some prominent exceptions, proactive, intentional or foresighted in planning for the care for their elderly members. This is perhaps this research’s most salient conclusion.
In Africa, institutes may not focus on the elderly sisters as much as they should because they have relatively fewer older members. Among these nations, Zambia, where 24 percent of sisters are older than 71, is something of an outlier. In Kenya, Uganda and Ghana, fewer than 15 percent of sisters are older than 71.
Mexican researchers note the pace of aging among religious sisters has accelerated faster than the general population, and 39 percent of sisters are older than 71, their average age is 62 and slightly more than half are older than 60.
Yet, concerning the impact accelerated aging has upon their institutes, as “The Needs of Elder Sisters in Mexico’s Women Religious Congregations” notes: “Congregations are hardly willing to talk about it. Leadership is only seeing the tip of the iceberg without considering the phenomenon.” “Long term policies, plans and strategies designed for the care of the elderly are highly scarce among women religious in Mexico, which leads to wasting resources.”
In the developing African nations, a much more challenging picture of efforts to care for older, infirm sisters emerges. Despite the relative gulf of resources and the continental divide, a Ghanaian sister expresses what many believe is the mindset sisters must adapt globally to meet the challenges of their aging populations better. “I think it is about time,” she says, “we put in a lot of thinking in taking care of our elderly sisters. We need to train more sisters in health care to be able to take proper care of them, we also need to collaborate with other groups to take care of them. Planning for old age should begin now.”
Training younger sisters to care for their elders, fostering greater cooperation and collaboration among institutes that could create a global network are among the innovative solutions researchers surfaced to help elderly sisters. They also hope the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and others will invest in these solutions. Others include: Central offices dedicated to elderly issues, a fund to help pay sisters’ medical expenses and inter-congregational hospitals to care for older sisters and generate income.
Financial investment into feasible solutions that achieve results are crucial to assure Catholic religious institutes’ sustainable futures. Nothing is more important to that future, however, than the sisters’ reconnecting with a scriptural understanding: New wine is best poured into fresh wineskins.
This post was written by CARA Associate Chris Byrd.
