In 1965, there were 179,000 Catholic sisters in the United States. They ran schools, hospitals,

shelters, their habits were synonymous with Catholicism. Within a generation, they all but disappeared.

Today, only 33,000 sisters remain, an 82% decline in 60 years.

We used to have three sisters for every one Catholic priest.

Today, it's just one to one.

Less than 1% of sisters are under 30, and the average age is 80.

The sisters left a gaping hole in the fabric of American Catholic life.

In 1920, sisters accounted for 92% of Catholic school teachers.

In 1970, they made up just below half.

And today, they make up only 1.5% of faculty.

In 1968, 770 of America's 796 Catholic hospitals were led by nuns or priests.

By 2011, that number had shrunk to just 8 out of 636.

Somewhere in the 20th century, Catholic nuns experienced an extinction-level event.

They left a vivid impression on the American imagination.

Older Catholics still tell stories of the nuns who taught me.

Secular movies and books still capitalize on the juxtaposition of the habit and traditional churches with the drama of mass murder, sexual perversion, or plain old-fashioned doubt.

Films from kinder times, like The Song of Bernadette and the Sound of Music, feel like glimpses into a lost and beautiful

world because in fact that world disappeared and it makes us sad today very few

Americans have ever met a nun in real life we get our nun fix from Hollywood

which is anything but flattering it's hard to comprehend just what that loss meant for our parishes, our country, and our own faith lives.

So whatever happened to America's nuns?

And are they ever coming back?

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