The rebel nuns who left their convent behind

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own independent community in 1970. They’d been inspired by the social change they saw around them in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and the Pope's promise to modernise the Catholic Church. They wanted to stop wearing their traditional habit and abandon their set prayer times, but their conservative cardinal refused to discuss change. So three hundred of the sisters left to set up their own lay community – the Immaculate Heart Community, which is still running today.

Former Sister Lucia Van Ruiten tells Witness History about the crisis they caused in the Catholic church.

(Photo: Nuns from the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary play guitars at the Mary's Day parade, 1964. Courtesy of the Immaculate Heart Community)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Choosing what to
0:32.1	watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:36.5	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:41.5	telly we share what we've been watching.
0:43.7	Cladie Aide!
0:45.7	Loads of games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:48.2	Lovely.
0:49.0	Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:51.2	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:54.7	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.
1:00.3	Hi and thanks for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service,
1:07.0	first-hand accounts of the moment that shaped our world.
1:10.0	I'm Lucy Burns and today I'm taking you to California in 1970 when a group of rebel nuns broke away from the Catholic authorities and set up their own independent Christian community.
1:29.0	Lucia Van Rutan, formerly Sister Lucia, joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the age of 18.
1:33.0	She started teaching in Catholic schools,
	...

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