U.S. Nuns Fear Crackdown

Nuns are all but extinct in America, down to an elderly 60,000 sisters versus 180,000 in 1965. Now the few left are worried that the Vatican is preparing to crack down on their way of life through two large-scale investigations that are drawing comparisons to an inquisition from some nuns. Some sisters are worried that more progressive nuns who don't wear religious habits or live in convents will be targeted by the church and ordered to return to the more traditional lifestyle. One nun who works as a professor in Berkeley sent a widely circulated e-mail to colleagues urging them to treat Vatican investigators as “uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house" and to try and stymie their efforts.