Nuns on the Bus: Dispatches From a Papal Road Trip
When the nuns first hit the road in 2012, their mission was to collect stories of economic oppression in protest of the Paul Ryan budget — in defiant response to Pope Benedict XVI’s startling decision to launch an investigation into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents more than 80 percent of religious sisters in the United States. The investigation was an outright attack on women’s role in the Church and was referred to as “a crackdown on American nuns.” Their alleged transgression was spending too much time on social justice issues, and promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
NETWORK was singled out in part because it supported the Affordable Care Act, despite the protest of the bishops.
In April, Pope Francis brought the investigation to a “quiet and merciful end.” Recently, during an address broadcast on ABC News, Pope Francis even expressed his admiration for nuns. “Is it unseemly for the pope to say this? I love you all very much,” he said, before thanking all the sisters of religious orders in the United States.
The pope’s olive branch came just days before the Nuns on the Bus launched their recent tour. Rolling Stone checked in with the sisters throughout their voyage.
Missouri (September 10-11)
To drive home the theme of “bridging the divides,” the nuns launch their tour in St. Louis, Missouri.
They roll into town just ahead of GOP presidential hopefuls, who will spend the weekend addressing a crowd of Christian conservatives at the airport Marriott across town.
The sisters gather in plain view of the Gateway Arch and the courthouse where in 1847 judges ruled that Dred Scott was not a free man. (A decade later, that decision resulted in the notorious Supreme Court ruling stating no one of African ancestry could become a U.S. citizen.)
“We know that the divide of race is so iconic here in St. Louis. Whether you all know it or not, that’s how the city is seen,” Sister Simone tells a crowd of 70 gathered in Kiener Plaza. “We have got to start to bridge the divide of race.”
They speak with women of color about their experiences raising black sons. “The tears flowed freely at the pain and agony as they talked of losing sons, grandsons and nephews to violence at the hands of police,” says Sister Bernadine Karge, a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa and an attorney based in Wisconsin. One woman shares a story of her young son being stopped by police on his way home from school. “The child asked his parents when that would stop. And she said to him, ‘Your whole life. This will always be a part of your experience in America.'”
The nuns say that while their on-the-ground mission is to collect stories to show the pope and lobby for working-class policy solutions such as extending the Child Tax Credit, their spiritual job while on the road is to listen, and let their hearts break open.
