Women Religious of Argentina and the Accompaniment of the Poor. Stages, Balance, and Perspectives of the preferential option for the poor launched after Vatican II

ANA LOURDES SUAREZ

Nueva York

Congreso; Association for Sociology of Religion; 2019

The presentation addresses, from a socio-historical perspective, the options of some female religious congregations that adopted a new way of community life known as inserted communitie. They did so following the ?the preferential option for the poor? launched as a challenge by the Document of the Latin American Bishops in Medellín (1968). The presentation discusses the process that led to the insertion alternative, its course over time, and its present situation in Argentina. For this purpose, the structure of the presentation is the following: First, I show and discuss statistics of some indicators of consecrated people in Argentinean Catholic Church (number of priests, religious women and men, nuns, etc). I then characterize their presencie in Argentina. Then I try to understand the alternative of living among the poor within both the historical model of the evolution of religious life, and the sociological model of the life cycle of a religious community. I argue that embracing the new life meant a painful process, full of conflicts within the congregations. The revitalization that many congregations expected would come from adopting inserted communities drove in many cases to more frustration. I argue that, however, for those religious women that made the option it did mean a profound renewal. In the third part of the presentation I analyze the process discussed in the two sections above, by focusing on two international female congregations: The Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (RSCJ) and the Franciscanas Misioneras de la Madre del Divino Pastor (FMMDP).