Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, I want to let you know that we
Speaker 1: talk about suicide in this episode. There are some links
Speaker 1: to resources in the episode description if you need them.
Speaker 1: I loved everything about my life, and then I joined
Speaker 1: this convent to follow God, thinking in my mind that
Speaker 1: everyone was going to love everyone and it was going
Speaker 1: to be double what I had at home, and it
Speaker 1: was completely different. I said, meet me up on the
Speaker 1: third floor, and then she came up and I just
Speaker 1: was crying and saying, I just I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1: So I said her, can you? I don't know how
Speaker 1: to get out, like how do I get out from
Speaker 1: a cocoa punch? And I heard radio this is the Turning.
Speaker 1: I'm Aerica Lance, Part six, the third floor. I'm Sue Webber.
Speaker 1: Do you want like that little brief bio blah blah
Speaker 1: or just the whole bio? So I'm Sue Webber? And
Speaker 1: who are you? I'm Joan Worcester And how do you
Speaker 1: two know each other? We're sisters? So let me clarify.
Speaker 1: Joan and Sue are former sisters with the Missionaries of Charity,
Speaker 1: but they're also sisters like actual real life sisters, and
Speaker 1: we're the same age. For thirteen days. Joan and Sue
Speaker 1: live in Pennsylvania. They huddle over a computer at jones
Speaker 1: house to video chat with me, squeezing together so they
Speaker 1: can both fit in the frame. I'm I'm far more
Speaker 1: stubborn than you are. What don't you say? Are you
Speaker 1: pretty startled? We're all stubborn. It's a family trade. I
Speaker 1: don't take a lot of things personally at all. I'm
Speaker 1: more sensitive. She's much more sensitive. You're super protective too,
Speaker 1: for people who get hurt. I seek for justice a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a commonality, and I think that has to do
Speaker 1: with the convent. But I've come to seek justice and
Speaker 1: truth and everything that I do and say. Joan, the
Speaker 1: younger sister, has a certain gentleness. Sometimes she goes for
Speaker 1: a while without saying anything. She just listens. Jones says
Speaker 1: her intimate relationship with God drives everything she does. I
Speaker 1: was the type of person that was always trying to
Speaker 1: please God, and then I realized that that he loves
Speaker 1: us unconditionally, and he loves us no matter where we
Speaker 1: are in life. Sue, the older sister, is bold and open,
Speaker 1: short haircut, big personality. Says it like it is. I'm
Speaker 1: out there I'm like up for anything. Joan and Sue
Speaker 1: both joined the MCS. Unlike every sister, they followed the
Speaker 1: vow of obedience. The vow commits sisters to the power
Speaker 1: structure in the m c S. You vowed to obey God.
Speaker 1: By obeying your superior promptly and without question, you become
Speaker 1: a pencil in God's hand, as Mother Teresa said, or
Speaker 1: as a former sister put it, a tool without will
Speaker 1: or opinion of your own. That didn't work for Sue
Speaker 1: and Joan. Their story shows how power works in the
Speaker 1: order who has power, what happens as a result, and
Speaker 1: what happens when you push back on it. Sue would
Speaker 1: grapple with this from above as a superior, Joan from below.
Speaker 1: Joan and Sue grew up in the nineteen seventies in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: a small city in the middle of Amish Country. They
Speaker 1: went to Catholic school. At the time, Joan, the younger sister,
Speaker 1: toyed with the idea of going to college on a
Speaker 1: track scholarship, but she told me, in my soul until
Speaker 1: I die, I know I was meant to be a nun.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighties she going to Franciscan Order of Nuns.
Speaker 1: She was nineteen years old, but something was missing. The
Speaker 1: Franciscans she was with took a vow of poverty, but
Speaker 1: she didn't feel they took it far enough. Life was
Speaker 1: too comfortable. And then she learned more about Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: I started reading some books about her and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: my word, she has it. While Joan was thinking about
Speaker 1: switching to the Missionaries of Charity, Sue beat her to it.
Speaker 1: She joined the m c's herself. Sue was twenty and
Speaker 1: she says the life suitor, especially helping the poor. When
Speaker 1: I asked her to tell me about some of the
Speaker 1: moments she found beautiful, she didn't know where to start. Thousands, literally,
Speaker 1: there are thousands of incredible, incredible beauty working among the poor,
Speaker 1: potentially making a difference in their lives. Six months in,
Speaker 1: Sue got some news. Her mistress told her that Joan
Speaker 1: was joining the MCS. She was leaving the Franciscans and
Speaker 1: coming to the same convent as Sue. The mistress cautioned Sue,
Speaker 1: remember no preferential love, even for family. When Joan joined,
Speaker 1: she learned the MCS had a different approach for starters.
Speaker 1: No psychological test. The Franciscans required aspiring nuns to take one.
Speaker 1: I actually think it's super important because I think what
Speaker 1: happens is you're getting women who have mental issues, right.
Speaker 1: And mother would just say, just love the sisters no
Speaker 1: matter what. But we had to live with them daily
Speaker 1: life was different to the MCS. Were much more regimented,
Speaker 1: and she noticed that the MCS didn't hug each other. Well,
Speaker 1: the Franciscan she'd been with hugged all the time. Nobody
Speaker 1: looks at anybody, nobody talks to anybody. It's grand silence.
Speaker 1: And Joan felt the m c s did poverty right.
Speaker 1: The poverty was, in my estimation, sensational, like everything we
Speaker 1: owned fit in a bucket. I love the simplicity. Since
Speaker 1: Joan was new, it was nice to see a familiar face.
Speaker 1: But my sister was rooted into the Missionaries of Charity
Speaker 1: way of life, right, So when there was complete silence,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd walk by here and kind of wink
Speaker 1: and do the things that I would do because I
Speaker 1: was just beginning. I'd nod or smile, and you know,
Speaker 1: she did do that when it was just her and I,
Speaker 1: but when she was in the group, she would pass
Speaker 1: me and not look at me, and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: because I was following the rules. She was a good nun.
Speaker 1: I don't know just in the beginning. A year later though,
Speaker 1: when they'd both be in a convent in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: they'd be more flexible, and then the vision we did
Speaker 1: sneak off a lot of times on the really third floor.
Speaker 1: On the third floor, well, my mom would send care packages,
Speaker 1: like of cookies, and especially around the holidays, they had
Speaker 1: to turn any packages over to the superior. From there
Speaker 1: it was usually given to the poor or shared with
Speaker 1: the whole convent. But sometimes Sue would say to herself,
Speaker 1: these are my favorites, these are jones favorite. So then
Speaker 1: I would like hide them, and then I would see
Speaker 1: Joan and I'd be like, meet me up on the
Speaker 1: third floor. And then we would sit up on these
Speaker 1: stacks of mattresses and eat the cookies and enjoyed every moment.
Speaker 1: Be worth any penance that we never got caught. No,
Speaker 1: we didn't. We're good. You guys have both preferred to pendence.
Speaker 1: And I was just wondering, when you say penance, are
Speaker 1: you thinking of the discipline change that kind of thing
Speaker 1: you can go first. Good, okay, so um, I only
Speaker 1: share with very intimate people, which is like my fellow
Speaker 1: sisters who left. I don't know if Mom even knows
Speaker 1: that she I think she does. Okay, well she saw
Speaker 1: your change. It's a question, so questions. So I didn't bracelet.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, and I will make my full
Speaker 1: confession right here, right now, that I was not faithful
Speaker 1: to my penances because I thought they were crazy. Joan's
Speaker 1: group of Aspirans learned about the discipline a few months in.
Speaker 1: So then they said, you can go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: But I go into the stall and I just I
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. And I heard the sister next to me,
Speaker 1: who was totally independences, and she was beating herself. I
Speaker 1: could hear her. I'm thinking, dear God, i'd be yelling,
Speaker 1: oh you know. And I thought, okay, I gotta do
Speaker 1: something because they're probably listening to me as I'm listening
Speaker 1: to them. So I hit the sides of the walls
Speaker 1: of the toilet, and I was just going, you know,
Speaker 1: hitting the sides instead of hitting myself because I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. And then gradually I began to do it,
Speaker 1: and I then didn't have problems with it because I
Speaker 1: do believe that if you do sacrifice yourself, I can
Speaker 1: gain grace with myself and I can also help someone
Speaker 1: else's soul. I believe that to this day. I believe that.
Speaker 1: Soon Joan took the discipline every day. Then she got
Speaker 1: the spiked arm chain, which she wore during mass. I
Speaker 1: put it on, and you're supposed to fold your hands
Speaker 1: because then it digs into your arm, and I felt Christ.
Speaker 1: I felt him as i've never I mean, I felt him.
Speaker 1: I think the injustice came when rules were different for
Speaker 1: different people. So for example, one of the rules was
Speaker 1: you can't go home because we have to live a
Speaker 1: life of poverty. But then a regional superior who really
Speaker 1: liked another sister, she got to go home for her
Speaker 1: parents funeral. It's it's everybody's at the mercy of whoever
Speaker 1: has power. They become the voice of God for you.
Speaker 1: That's all they keep saying. I'm the voice of God
Speaker 1: for you at this moment, under your valuve obedience right,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is, And they use God as
Speaker 1: the weapon. M hmm. Joan felt that weapon, and this
Speaker 1: is where her story diverged from SEUs in New York.
Speaker 1: I got something in my stomach where I was really,
Speaker 1: really sick. She was in so much pain she had
Speaker 1: to crawl down the stairs. Her mistress didn't offer support.
Speaker 1: I would go to her and said, I'm really sick,
Speaker 1: and she would say, just you know, give it to Jesus,
Speaker 1: offer it up, you'll be fine. One day a volunteer
Speaker 1: saw Joan and the condition she was in and she said,
Speaker 1: this little child needs to go to the doctor, but
Speaker 1: Jones mistress said no, it was the superior's decision to
Speaker 1: make and the superior was away. So I just continued
Speaker 1: on every day crawling down the stairs. She maybe come
Speaker 1: down to church no matter what, whether I was sick
Speaker 1: or not, I had to come into try to work,
Speaker 1: which I couldn't. When the volunteer came back, she decided
Speaker 1: to take charge. She said, sister, go get your shoes.
Speaker 1: You're going to die. You have to go. Joan found
Speaker 1: out she had pancreatitis. Left untreated, it can be really serious.
Speaker 1: So that's how it started. Jones stayed in the hospital
Speaker 1: for a week. When she returned to the convent, she
Speaker 1: says something she aged with her mistress. She targeted Joan
Speaker 1: and she was relentless. First she accused Joan of being
Speaker 1: too friendly with a man, a seminarian who had prayed
Speaker 1: with her while she was in the hospital, then of
Speaker 1: trying to seduce the men coming into the soup kitchen
Speaker 1: for meals. I was like shocked. I was shocked that
Speaker 1: she was saying it. I never even thought it. I'm
Speaker 1: not going after anyone. So she accused me of that
Speaker 1: and so much more. Jones says it was impossible to
Speaker 1: please her, Like the time her mistress told her to
Speaker 1: teach English to some sisters from South America. Joan didn't
Speaker 1: know any Spanish. She says. She did her best to
Speaker 1: teach them, but every time one of the sisters made
Speaker 1: a mistake in English, the mistress made Joan do penance.
Speaker 1: So I used to tell them to not speak. I said,
Speaker 1: can you please not just speak and save me from
Speaker 1: my penances. Sometimes her mistress made her kneel in silence
Speaker 1: beside the refectory table. Well, everyone else ate and talked.
Speaker 1: These humiliations, the accusations, the little dig they all piled up.
Speaker 1: She would tell me I wasn't holy, Tell me I
Speaker 1: was prideful, Tell me that Jesus knows You're a fake
Speaker 1: and a phony, and all these kinds of things. She
Speaker 1: would say to me. Right, So, um, I must have
Speaker 1: been really hard to hear. It was very hard. Joan
Speaker 1: began to question her vocation. Is this really what God
Speaker 1: wanted for her? After six months, she was sent to
Speaker 1: a convent in Chicago for postulancy with a new mistress.
Speaker 1: I've thought I died and went to heaven. She was wonderful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: free from the belittling mistress in New York, john could
Speaker 1: focus on the parts of religious life that fueled her
Speaker 1: visiting shed In's, working at the soup kitchens and shelters.
Speaker 1: But then words spread that the mistress in New York
Speaker 1: might be transferred to Chicago. Panic said in one sister
Speaker 1: in my group she took an iron and burnt her
Speaker 1: leg as penance penance so the mistress wouldn't be assigned
Speaker 1: to Chicago. That's how much people did not like her.
Speaker 1: But the penance was in vain. The mistress transferred to Chicago,
Speaker 1: and Jones says she started right in again. She would
Speaker 1: call me in and she would scream at me and
Speaker 1: tell me that I'm very irresponsible, and she would yell
Speaker 1: at me and say you're stupid. There were times when
Speaker 1: Joan had no idea what she had done wrong. She
Speaker 1: cried in the chapel and prayed, why is this happening?
Speaker 1: Why are you allowing this to happen to me? I
Speaker 1: only wanted to come and serve you. I was angry
Speaker 1: and hurt and sad, and I was all of those. Finally,
Speaker 1: Jane spoke with her superior, the nune above her mistress.
Speaker 1: She tried to explain it all, but the superior told
Speaker 1: Joan to forgive her mistress. She said, can you try
Speaker 1: and love her? I said, okay, I'll try. But there
Speaker 1: was only so much Joan could take. She was at
Speaker 1: a breaking point, so she turned to the one person
Speaker 1: she thought could change things, Mother Teresa. When Mother Teresa visited,
Speaker 1: Joan had a one on one meeting with her. She says.
Speaker 1: She told Mother Teresa everything that happened with her miss
Speaker 1: us and I was crying and sobbing, and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think Jesus wants me here. Mother,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. And she said, Sister
Speaker 1: Maria Fatima, be only all for Jesus. And of course,
Speaker 1: in my head, I'm thinking, really that's all you got.
Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna tell me. You're not going to
Speaker 1: take this evil woman away from me. You're not going
Speaker 1: to stop this abuse. You're not going to do anything
Speaker 1: about it. You're just gonna let me continue to suffer.
Speaker 1: That's how I say that. No, I was thinking I'd
Speaker 1: say a words, mother, Teresa, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: say a word. That's the difference between me and my sister.
Speaker 1: My sister would have told her. I would not have
Speaker 1: to skip quiet. I just accepted it. By now, Joan
Speaker 1: had been in the order for a year. It was
Speaker 1: time to become a novice, which for her meant to
Speaker 1: transfer to San Francisco, the same convent as Sue. Before
Speaker 1: she left, she had a meeting with her mistress and
Speaker 1: she said, I know that I've been very very hard
Speaker 1: on you. I wanted to break your spirit. I wanted
Speaker 1: you to become humble because I know you're going to
Speaker 1: be something great in this community. And I said to her,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to tell you something. You as a
Speaker 1: mistress have the power to make or break a vocation,
Speaker 1: and you have broken mind and you live with that
Speaker 1: in California. Sue had no idea what her younger sister
Speaker 1: was going through. Even now that they were in the
Speaker 1: same convent, they couldn't really talk about it. Joan hung on,
Speaker 1: but she was fragile. And then she got a package
Speaker 1: from her mom. It was full of family photos, pictures
Speaker 1: of our family reunion. And I think because I was
Speaker 1: struggling so much there at that moment, that when she
Speaker 1: sent those pictures, it was a trigger for me. So
Speaker 1: that day, Joan found her big sister and told her
Speaker 1: to go to their spot. I said, meet me up
Speaker 1: on the third floor. And then she came up and
Speaker 1: I just was crying and saying, I just I can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. Um I know me too, because we're
Speaker 1: both going to be crying right here. And so I
Speaker 1: said to her, can you I don't know how to
Speaker 1: get out, Like, how do I get out? You could
Speaker 1: tell that she was suffering, like you could just physically
Speaker 1: tell she was suffering, and I was super clear if
Speaker 1: she stayed, it would have been so massively unhealthy. And
Speaker 1: she said, the only way you can get out is
Speaker 1: if you say that you can't live the celibate life,
Speaker 1: because every other way they would talk you into staying.
Speaker 1: So I went down to the sister, and I said, um,
Speaker 1: I can't live the celibate life, like every time I
Speaker 1: go in a tram car, look at guys. It was
Speaker 1: all lies. It wasn't true. But I told her that,
Speaker 1: and she said, if you would have said anything else,
Speaker 1: I would have asked you to stay. But because you
Speaker 1: said you can't live the celibate life, I understand that
Speaker 1: that's a gift from God. And from there that it
Speaker 1: was kind of quick, like call your parents and I
Speaker 1: said to meet me, and that I was getting all
Speaker 1: this flight. And then it was all like kind of
Speaker 1: quietly done, like hush, hush, go down and get clothing.
Speaker 1: At this time, I'm super skinny and kind of sickly looking,
Speaker 1: but I put clothing on, and I still felt that
Speaker 1: I was called. She truly felt called. And then there
Speaker 1: was no healthy soil for that call to grow. The
Speaker 1: saddest part for me was that my soul didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave because I love the work and I loved
Speaker 1: the prayer, I loved the whole life. But mentally I
Speaker 1: was losing Joan. And then I went into the chapel
Speaker 1: and my name was Sister Maria Fatima, and everybody there
Speaker 1: was singing this our Lady of Fatima song and I
Speaker 1: was kneeling and I was crying. It was like I
Speaker 1: was having an out of body experience. When I walked
Speaker 1: out the door, I left my soul in the chapel.
Speaker 1: The very depth of my soul was still there because
Speaker 1: I didn't really want to go, but my body was
Speaker 1: taking me out and it was so painful to watch.
Speaker 1: And then for me the fear of like is that
Speaker 1: going to happen to me? Like? Am I going to
Speaker 1: lose myself? Even though Joan left, Sue stayed. She progressed
Speaker 1: through the ranks of the order, took her first vows,
Speaker 1: took her final vows, she became a superior, and she
Speaker 1: stayed in the m CS for over a decade, working
Speaker 1: all over the country in women's shelters and soup kitchens.
Speaker 1: Sue says her outspoken nature helped and she knew how
Speaker 1: to navigate the system, like the time Mother Teresa visited
Speaker 1: the empty house in Baton Rouge where Sue was running
Speaker 1: a summer camp. She'd be like, how's it going it?
Speaker 1: And I basically lied. I basically said, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: really hard, because I knew she wouldn't transfer me. Wow.
Speaker 1: But if I would have went in and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I love it here, and I probably would have got transfer.
Speaker 1: You kind of learned the code to continue doing what
Speaker 1: you wanted, because I've definitely heard from other people, you know,
Speaker 1: expressing a lot of enthusiasm for something and then getting
Speaker 1: pulled off of that job, like, Oh, she's enjoying that
Speaker 1: too much. Yes, I think that happened a lot. And
Speaker 1: I'm super intuitive in that way, so as soon as
Speaker 1: I know the code, I'm in. Sue had been an
Speaker 1: EMC for about ten years. When she became a superior,
Speaker 1: she was transferred to the m C Eight's Hospice in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. It was a three story wooden house. The
Speaker 1: sisters lived on the first floor. So when I first
Speaker 1: got there, there were six of us total, and there
Speaker 1: were three that I would say could function and carry
Speaker 1: out duties well, and there were three that were really struggling. First,
Speaker 1: she had to learn to manage the house with no training.
Speaker 1: So you kind of go in blind. You don't kind
Speaker 1: of go in blind. You go in blind, just pray
Speaker 1: and you'll get the grace to do what needs to
Speaker 1: be done. So she relied on her intuition in the hospice.
Speaker 1: It was rewarding to care for these men with aids
Speaker 1: who were dying. Most of these men were rejected from
Speaker 1: their families. Like when we tried to reach their families,
Speaker 1: they didn't want anything to do with it. I mean
Speaker 1: that was the early nineties. The stigma was still there.
Speaker 1: This one young man, Lamont, and he was young, beautiful, funny.
Speaker 1: We contacted his family. I mean at this time, he
Speaker 1: couldn't get up, he couldn't sit up. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was completely bedridden. And so I said to him, Hey,
Speaker 1: I have a surprise for you, and then he's said
Speaker 1: what First, I just brought his mother, and he just
Speaker 1: burst into tears, and she burst into tears, and then
Speaker 1: she came over and held him almost like a child again.
Speaker 1: I got underneath him and held him and just kept
Speaker 1: kissing him and telling him how much she loved him.
Speaker 1: And oh, he sobbed, sobbed, sobbed, sobbed, and and then
Speaker 1: the siblings came in, and they were a very exuberant family,
Speaker 1: and so you would just hear him laughing and they
Speaker 1: would sing. And then for like three days it was
Speaker 1: just like party time. It was so sweet. The mom
Speaker 1: had put an eight track tape. We had a little
Speaker 1: tape recorder thing, and she put the eight track tape
Speaker 1: in and hit the button. This voice and song was.
Speaker 1: It gave me chills and I said to her, that
Speaker 1: is so beautiful, and she goes, that's Lamont. He had
Speaker 1: an exquisite voice, and then he passed away like like
Speaker 1: a day after that. As a superior, Sue was now
Speaker 1: technically the direct voice of God, because she never thought
Speaker 1: of it that way. Now she could make her own rules,
Speaker 1: she could eat what she wanted, even form relationships outside
Speaker 1: the convent. Having power for the first time in years
Speaker 1: led her to act in ways she didn't expect. When
Speaker 1: you are in an organization that suppresses the human spirit
Speaker 1: in the ways that it had done, you always think,
Speaker 1: you know, if I was superior, I would never act
Speaker 1: like that. I would be kind, I would listen. And
Speaker 1: what you realized is the second you became superior, you
Speaker 1: had a lot of freedom and power that was suppressed
Speaker 1: for many, many years. One time a nun underseas supervision
Speaker 1: told her she was sick. She would say, I can't
Speaker 1: do X whatever. But I remember going, yes, you can,
Speaker 1: You're not that sick. And I had the power to
Speaker 1: make her do those things. One night, while the sister
Speaker 1: has slept, Sue snuck out to the chapel, just sat
Speaker 1: alone in the quiet, and all of a sudden, there
Speaker 1: was this moment of my God, you are being exactly
Speaker 1: you're doing and being exactly the things you said you
Speaker 1: weren't going to be or do. What is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: You know you're wielding power, the whole infamous absolute power
Speaker 1: corrupts absolutely that you had absolute power in that microcosmo absolutely,
Speaker 1: and then I shifted completely. Sue decided to change her
Speaker 1: whole approach. She listened, not reprimand not humiliate. She'd start
Speaker 1: with kindness, but she was about to learn that her
Speaker 1: absolute power wasn't really absolute. One day, so you got
Speaker 1: a call from Mother Teresa about a answer. A new
Speaker 1: nun was coming to work at the hospice, and she said,
Speaker 1: I'm sending you sister so and so. She's a gift
Speaker 1: from Jesus and you just need to love her. I
Speaker 1: mean the standing joke as superior. Here's where if you
Speaker 1: get a phone call from Mother or a regional superior
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, we have a gift for you.
Speaker 1: We're going to send a sister to your house. That
Speaker 1: was a big red flag because that was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're getting somebody who's they're struggling somewhere else and they're
Speaker 1: moving them. So it was a standing joke. We're like,
Speaker 1: you can just keep the gift. So this sister comes in.
Speaker 1: Now we're in a wooden building with non ambliatory patients
Speaker 1: on the second floor. No elevators, no nothing, like if
Speaker 1: there's a fire, you have to carry them down the
Speaker 1: stairs and out the door. Okay. I think it was
Speaker 1: like day three and everybody's in bed and we all
Speaker 1: sleep in a common dormitory and Sue wakes up. She
Speaker 1: smells something, maybe smoke, so she hops off her cot
Speaker 1: I'm like throwing on my storry and I fly past
Speaker 1: the chapel and out of the corner of my eye
Speaker 1: I catch flames. She rushes into the chapel. The new
Speaker 1: sister's inside. The sister had taken all the trash and
Speaker 1: put it under the altar and lit it on fire
Speaker 1: and was just kneeling there, staring into the fire. And
Speaker 1: I don't know why I didn't panic, but I didn't,
Speaker 1: And so I went next to her and I was like, sister,
Speaker 1: do you know that there's there's a fire under the altar.
Speaker 1: And she turned to me and shook me right in here,
Speaker 1: and she goes, do you know I am possessed? And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know about that, but I know
Speaker 1: I have to put that fire out. And next morning,
Speaker 1: the sister tells Sue she has no memory of the fire,
Speaker 1: but then she does it again. Soon, Sue says, this
Speaker 1: sister is setting fires every few days. Of course, susarec
Speaker 1: she's losing sleep. She doesn't know what to do. She
Speaker 1: calls her regional superior, who says, just talk to her,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't help, so she calls mother, Teresa. Sue
Speaker 1: suggests sending the sister to a psychotherapist. And I said,
Speaker 1: I'm really struggling. And Mother said, just give her time, sister,
Speaker 1: and just keep loving her. And and when I hung up,
Speaker 1: I had great clarity, There's no way that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be able to manage this. While all of this
Speaker 1: was happening with Sue, Joan had to make a new life.
Speaker 1: When she left the m c S. Joane did the
Speaker 1: only thing she could do. With no money and no
Speaker 1: practical work experience, and really no sense of what was possible.
Speaker 1: She went home to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But her mistress's words
Speaker 1: followed her. She says they were like tapes, these memories
Speaker 1: of every terrible thing her mrs said, playing over and over.
Speaker 1: Jesus knows you're a fake and a phony. You're stupid,
Speaker 1: serves you right. Joanes still felt called to be a nun.
Speaker 1: She went to church, but now she felt like an imposter.
Speaker 1: And then people would come to me and say, you're
Speaker 1: so holy. I would leave that church and go to
Speaker 1: another church so that no one would know me, and
Speaker 1: so I could not be noticed. And that's the worst
Speaker 1: thing that to this day, I don't want to be noticed.
Speaker 1: There is another tape that played in her head, the
Speaker 1: words of one of her confessors. That's a priest you
Speaker 1: confess your sins to, or who serves as a spiritual guide.
Speaker 1: Father Donald McGuire was a Jesuit priest. He was convicted
Speaker 1: of sexually abusing boys and eventually sentenced in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine to twenty five years in prison, but before that
Speaker 1: he was often assigned as a confessor for mc sisters,
Speaker 1: including Sue and Joan. Years before he was sentenced, Donald
Speaker 1: McGuire told Joan sa thing that would haunt her, and
Speaker 1: he said to us, if you make it to the
Speaker 1: novitiate and you leave, you'll have handicapped children, You'll get divorced,
Speaker 1: and bad things will happen to you because God wants
Speaker 1: you here. This stuck with Joan because she had made
Speaker 1: it to the novicia and left. Once she did, she
Speaker 1: felt like Father McGuire's warning started to come true. I
Speaker 1: went home in January. Now, mind you, for the last
Speaker 1: two years, no love, no nothing. I met this man.
Speaker 1: He said he loved me, went to church with me,
Speaker 1: the whole nine yards. Eventually they got married. I had
Speaker 1: this huge wedding. Nuns were singing in my wedding. I
Speaker 1: mean it was huge. But Joan wasn't happy for long.
Speaker 1: She says, the relationship en did horribly after three months. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now here I am an x nun and a
Speaker 1: man leaves me and he said to us, if you leave,
Speaker 1: you'll get the worst. You'll have handicapped children and bad
Speaker 1: things will happen to you. So I thought, okay, I
Speaker 1: can't be a none, I can't be married. So I
Speaker 1: went up to this place we have called Pequi Pinnacle.
Speaker 1: She hiked through the woods up to an overlook on
Speaker 1: a tall hill near home. She could see water and
Speaker 1: trees stretched out below. This place was special to Joan.
Speaker 1: She used to talk to God here. It was where
Speaker 1: she felt her call to religious life. This time was different.
Speaker 1: And I was going to jump right kill myself, because um,
Speaker 1: God must hate me. So I went up there, I
Speaker 1: went to jump, and a snake slithered up in front
Speaker 1: of me, and um, I hate snakes. So I was
Speaker 1: scared to death. So I ran back to my car
Speaker 1: and got in my car and then went back home. Hi, bey, Carol,
Speaker 1: do you want to meet Erica. Let's gonna meet Erica.
Speaker 1: Look here, look, look there's Erica. Now. Joan is a
Speaker 1: mother and a grandmother. Her daughter, Hannah, has a toddler
Speaker 1: and they live next door. I try to live in
Speaker 1: God's will and let God unfold the will. So right now,
Speaker 1: the will for me is to be a great mom
Speaker 1: and a grandmother, and I lead a company. She remarried
Speaker 1: to a man she calls kind and patient named Tom.
Speaker 1: Before we got married, I said, don't marry me because
Speaker 1: I can never love you the way you deserve to
Speaker 1: be loved. Because I love God ultimately to the nth degree.
Speaker 1: God is what I love the most, and that's where
Speaker 1: I spend most of my time. But that didn't get
Speaker 1: her Tom, and he just said, no, I you know
Speaker 1: I love you. Joan made a life outside the convent.
Speaker 1: She built a small chapel for prayer in her backyard.
Speaker 1: She lived her faith in a different way. And then
Speaker 1: one day someone showed up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a woman
Speaker 1: in a white sarry with blue stripes. It was her sister, Sue.
Speaker 1: In the years before Sue Webber returned to Pennsylvania, her
Speaker 1: time as a superior had brought her a step deeper
Speaker 1: into the organization. It also gave her a new vantage point.
Speaker 1: When I became superior and I had more time to think,
Speaker 1: that opened the door to really question a lot of things.
Speaker 1: She already had a growing list of concerns about the
Speaker 1: missionaries of charity, like how sisters were treated and how
Speaker 1: sisters and leadership roles used their authority. So you have
Speaker 1: sisters who were amazing and in my opinion, didn't even
Speaker 1: wield power, and then you had sisters who wheeled it
Speaker 1: to the youngth degree. You know, everybody's at the mercy
Speaker 1: of whoever has power. There's something else that bothered her.
Speaker 1: She thinks Mother Teresa founded this order based on what
Speaker 1: worked for Mother Teresa. She got to follow her calling,
Speaker 1: she founded her own order, she established the rules. The
Speaker 1: Missionaries of Charity was an extension of her personality and drive.
Speaker 1: But the way so you saw it, the sisters inside
Speaker 1: this order couldn't follow their own calling, just obey, just
Speaker 1: follow assignments, regardless of feelings. So he says, this one
Speaker 1: size fits all doesn't work, especially for a group of
Speaker 1: women from around the world. One former sister told me
Speaker 1: a convent she was in had something like twenty seven
Speaker 1: nationalities all living together. It sometimes lads to language and
Speaker 1: cultural issues. So you tried to explain that to Mother Teresa,
Speaker 1: trying to get her to understand that everybody is not
Speaker 1: the same, Like everybody's coming in, all of us with
Speaker 1: our baggage, and in her mind, the second you crossed
Speaker 1: over the threshold to the order, all of that disappears,
Speaker 1: or it should disappear. And in the utopia of life,
Speaker 1: that would be lovely winded, like everybody just goes in
Speaker 1: and then we all just love each other. Instead, SUSA
Speaker 1: sisters struggle. They were tired and stressed and grapple the
Speaker 1: language barriers, some needed psychological care, and no one seemed
Speaker 1: to fix the problems. I realized that the order was
Speaker 1: wired that you had very little time to think, so
Speaker 1: you had your morning prayer and your adoration. I can't
Speaker 1: speak for anybody else, but all I ever did was
Speaker 1: worked really hard not to fall asleep during that time.
Speaker 1: I've heard that from a number of people, which should
Speaker 1: have been the time where you can think and have
Speaker 1: your thought process. If you're in a bad relationship, if
Speaker 1: you're all your energy is in the bad relationship, you
Speaker 1: don't have the capacity to look at it through another lens.
Speaker 1: I could no longer live what I felt I was
Speaker 1: being called to. At one point, Sue learned about a
Speaker 1: letter Mother Teresa wrote. She was struggling with do I
Speaker 1: serve this sisters or do I serve the poor? And
Speaker 1: I will never forget this. She wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: the pope, and the Pope wrote back, and this is
Speaker 1: what he said, give necessary care to your sisters and
Speaker 1: loving care to the poor. And I was like, w
Speaker 1: T F. Seriously, that is insane, like give nesting, like
Speaker 1: the very people who are carrying out your work. The
Speaker 1: reality is without her sisters, the order doesn't exist women
Speaker 1: who were willing to dedicate their life to the service
Speaker 1: of the poor. You're going to give them necessary care only,
Speaker 1: and you're giving loving care to the point, yeah, I
Speaker 1: went I went off the deep end on that one,
Speaker 1: because you wanted loving care for the sisters. Yes, because
Speaker 1: anybody understands humanity. You can't give what you don't have.
Speaker 1: So if you have an order of sisters who are
Speaker 1: not being filled with love, how are they going to
Speaker 1: be loving? And you see that in houses where we've
Speaker 1: been accused, and rightly so, of mistreating people. And for me,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about these sisters are bad people. They were empty.
Speaker 1: They were empty, and you can't live that kind of
Speaker 1: a life if you're empty. Sue felt like she was
Speaker 1: on the verge of a breakdown, so she asked for
Speaker 1: a temporary leave. She went back to her parents house
Speaker 1: in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, still wearing the sorry, She kept her
Speaker 1: MC rituals. She rose early, she prayed. But something had changed.
Speaker 1: Maybe she wasn't called to life in the convent anymore.
Speaker 1: But someone else did feel the call. Joan, I still
Speaker 1: felt that I was called no matter what, and I
Speaker 1: don't think it ever changes. For me, it never has changed,
Speaker 1: and I fight that constantly. So it was hard for
Speaker 1: her to see Sue back in their parents house dressed
Speaker 1: in the blue and white sorry a superior. When I
Speaker 1: left the Missionaries of Charity, I kept a lot to myself. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't share a lot with people. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised I'm sharing what I'm sharing with you. I think
Speaker 1: at one point I felt weak that I couldn't do
Speaker 1: it um and so I was probably a little jealous
Speaker 1: of her that she got to stay in and she
Speaker 1: was doing it. And then also and then also I
Speaker 1: was a little hurt because I guess I wanted her
Speaker 1: to sway me to stay when I told her I
Speaker 1: was going to leave. So for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: I probably blamed her that she didn't think I had
Speaker 1: a vocation, but I knew in my soul I did,
Speaker 1: And so I was kind of hurt by her. But
Speaker 1: it was me. It wasn't her. She wasn't intentionally hurting me,
Speaker 1: But I felt hurt by that because I felt like
Speaker 1: she didn't defend my vocation. That must have been really hard.
Speaker 1: Have you talked about this before. What is it like
Speaker 1: to hear that too? I'm not surprised, and it makes
Speaker 1: sense that she would feel that way. For me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about saying somebody had a vocation or not. For me,
Speaker 1: it was more of a protective and you're not going
Speaker 1: to be who you are if you stay here. After
Speaker 1: nine months in Lancaster, the reasons for Sue to leave
Speaker 1: began to outweigh her desire to stay. She stopped wearing
Speaker 1: this sharry. She wasn't going back. I was recognizing that
Speaker 1: I was no longer true to myself, and I that
Speaker 1: I couldn't be true to myself if I stayed in there.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa asked her for a meeting in Harlem, one
Speaker 1: last attempt to change Sue's mind. Joan drove her there
Speaker 1: and the two of them walked into the convent together.
Speaker 1: There was a woman who made sure nobody saw me,
Speaker 1: snuck me into a parlor, and then when all the
Speaker 1: sisters had gone to the chapel, she snucked me from
Speaker 1: the parlor to where mother's room was. Mother had her
Speaker 1: head down. I knelt down to get her blessing, and
Speaker 1: she blessed me, and then I sat on the chair
Speaker 1: and then she immediately was like, you need to come back.
Speaker 1: This is where God's calling you, Mother Mary. Once you
Speaker 1: hear Mother Teresa, she had all her little axioms, She
Speaker 1: had all her little snippets that were exactly the same
Speaker 1: every single time you went to the table. So I
Speaker 1: felt like I was not being heard. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be heard. And finally I said, Mother, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want to come back. I said, things would
Speaker 1: have to really change for me. She said, you need
Speaker 1: to come back. Sister Kiara is in Russia. She converted
Speaker 1: this many people to Catholicism, and that just made me
Speaker 1: like rear up. And I looked her right in the
Speaker 1: eye and I said, yeah, us, and you have over
Speaker 1: three thousand women religious dying in your community. At this point,
Speaker 1: Sue was yelling John could hear it from the next room.
Speaker 1: And then she kind of sat back, pulled up, And
Speaker 1: then I really felt like I was being heard. But
Speaker 1: by then it didn't matter. Nothing Mother Teresa could say
Speaker 1: would change Sue's mind. She left. Not long after she
Speaker 1: left the convent, she went on a spiritual retreat to
Speaker 1: reflect and figure out what to do. I was doing
Speaker 1: a three month retreat, silent retreat. I was in this tiny,
Speaker 1: little like square foot cabin in this vast forest and
Speaker 1: incredible beauty of nature and wood burning stoves. So all
Speaker 1: the wood was stacked outside and it's winter, and I
Speaker 1: just took a lot of books and all written by
Speaker 1: priests and stuff, and I started reading this book. There
Speaker 1: was a section that said there are I forget how
Speaker 1: many ten, I think ten signs that you are in
Speaker 1: a cult. And I'm reading this book and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is the Missionaries of Charity, this
Speaker 1: mission and I felt like it was the first time
Speaker 1: I was reading something that was like validating my experience.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I get to the end
Speaker 1: of the book and this priest says, a perfect example
Speaker 1: of a non cult is the Missionaries of Charity. I
Speaker 1: literally get up off so fun. I opened the door.
Speaker 1: It's snowing like crazy. I fling the book out across
Speaker 1: the lawn. I end up taking all the wood and
Speaker 1: pitching it. I was I was livid, like livid. M
Speaker 1: I was like, this is ridiculous. So I go back
Speaker 1: out in the snow looking for the book that I
Speaker 1: threw out. I find it. I bring the book back
Speaker 1: in and I sit down and proceed to write this
Speaker 1: man a letter and basically say for you to have
Speaker 1: made a statement like that, never having lived in that
Speaker 1: order is not only dangerous, it is untruthful. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening, and stick with us because there's a
Speaker 1: lot more in the coming weeks. This is the first
Speaker 1: time that I have ever encountered any form of sexual
Speaker 1: violation or abuse in the missionaries of charity. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it doesn't exist. The Turning is written by Allen
Speaker 1: lance Lesser and Me. Our producers are Allen lance Lesser
Speaker 1: and Emily Foreman. Our editor is Rob Rosenthal. Andrea A
Speaker 1: Suage is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amy Gains, Sarah oh Lender, Catherine Joyce,
Speaker 1: Beth and Macaluso, Travis Dunlap, and consulting producer Mary Johnson.
Speaker 1: Her memoir and Unquenchable Thirst provided inspiration for this series.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Jessica Alfert and John Parratti from
Speaker 1: Acco Punch and Katrina Norville from My Heart Radio. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is by Matt Reid. For photos and more
Speaker 1: details on the series, follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch.
Speaker 1: You can reach out via email to the turning at
Speaker 1: Rocca punch dot com. I'm Erica Lands.