Author: Shaju Philip
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 19, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/exnuns-confessions-set-to-rock-kerala-churc.../425407/
Already reeling under several controversies,
the Kerala Catholic Church is facing fresh embarrassment from a tell-all autobiography
written by a nun who recently quit the Order alleging harassment from superiors.
'Amen - an autobiography of a nun', released
last week, is written by Dr Sister Jesme, 52, who was the Principal of St
Mary's College, Thrissur, till last August when she quit the Congregation
of Mother Carmelite (CMC).
"Dedicated to Jesus", Amen is explicit
in its details of the sexual repression and harassment behind the Church walls
as well as the draconian rules and "greed" of the Order. Jesme claims
that since the book was released, she has been getting calls pledging solidarity.
"Nuns mingle with the whole spectrum
of the community around them. They teach students, comfort the aged and nurse
the sick; still the brides of the Church remain an enigma. My work would throw
light on the misunderstood convent life, engulfed in darkness," says
Jesme.
Apart from the Abhaya murder in which a nun
and priests are accused, the Kerala Church was recently in the news for a
priest "adopting" a 26-year-old woman.
Jesme's autobiography includes a poignant
version by her of how the convent authorities tried to twice prove that she
had mental problems and get her admitted into a rehab centre after she reportedly
spoke out against the malpractices within the Order.
Starting with her first days in the Church,
30 years ago, she talks of priets forcing novices to have relations with them
and the closet homosexuality within nun ranks, "which the Church reckons
as the dirtiest thing possible". "If nuns developed unusual interest
in each other, authorities would deploy other inmates to watch them,"
she writes.
The book says Jesme herself was forced into
such a relationship by a fellow nun, and that her complaints to a senior nun
were ignored. According to her, the other nun said she preferred such a relationship
as it ruled out pregnancy. There were others who had affairs with priests,
she writes.
Another passage in Amen deals with a chance
encounter Jesme had with a priest in Bangalore while on her way to Dharwar
to attend a UGC refresher course in English. "My plan was to stay at
the waiting room at the Bangalore railway station. But sisters in the convent
gave me the address of a pious, decent priest. When I reached Bangalore, the
priest was waiting to receive me. He embraced me and took me to his presbytery.
After breakfast, he took me to Lalbagh (Botanical Garden) and showed me several
pairs cuddling behind trees. He also gave a sermon on the necessity of physical
love and described the illicit affairs certain bishops and priests had."
Later, when they were in his room, she writes,
he stripped and made her do the same.
Jesme claims that while nuns in the lower
ranks were punished if caught for even minor offences, the Church turned a
blind eye to those superior or with influence for major transgressions.
Talking about the Church's draconian rules,
Jesme writes in the book that she was not allowed to go home when her father
died, or to even pray some extra hours for his soul. "I was able to see
my father barely 15 minutes before the funeral. The alibi of the superiors
was that the then senior sisters were not even lucky enough to see the bodies
of their parents."
During her time in the Church, Jesme often
ran into problems with superiors. She was called "cine nun" after
she provided office facility for a film festival at St Mary's College, leading
to the first campus film from the college, as well as when she shared dais
with a sex worker for the release of a book on the life of a prostitute.
Since quitting CMC, Jesme has been staying
alone in a flat in Kozhikode. She told The Indian Express she was still living
as a "nun". "I go for Church mass daily and have no plans to
get married."
