The Return to Rome, Five Years Later

The Return to Rome, Five Years Later | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report



Former sedevacantist nuns reflect on their joyful return to the Church and on their lives in a thriving new religious community.

Five years ago, a
major change came to the lives of Sister
Mary Eucharista, a member of the Religious Congregation of Mary
Immaculate Queen (CMRI), and 14 of her fellow sisters living at Mount St.
Michael (“the Mount”) in Spokane, Washington. Bishop Mark Pivarunas, the Superior General of the CMRI organization,
told the sisters they had to leave the community if they did not stop promoting
“heterodox” views among the other 35 sisters.

But their
“heresy” was not the kind American Catholics have seen in some communities of nuns
in recent generations. Sister Mary Eucharista and her sisters were asked to
leave because they had come to believe that Pope Benedict XVI was indeed the
legitimate head of the Roman Catholic Church.  

The CMRIs were
initially founded in 1967 with approval of Church authorities, but went on to
embrace sedevacantism, separating
themselves from the Church. As sedevacantists, they do not accept the
legitimacy of any of the popes since the close of the Second Vatican Council.
 

“I feel a deep
love and compassion for my former community,” Sister Mary Eucharista, 52, says
today. “They will always be special to me. But while I understand them, I can
never go back unless they return to full communion with the Church.”

Guitars and bongo
drums

Sister Mary
Eucharista was born in Southern California into a pious Catholic family. They
prayed the Rosary together and often went to daily Mass. But the close of
Vatican II brought major changes to her parish, St. John the Baptist in Costa
Mesa. Guitars and bongo drums suddenly appeared at Mass, altar rails and
statues were removed, and catechism teachers began publically denying Catholic
teachings such as the existence of purgatory and the Assumption of Mary. One
day, her mother noticed a holy water font was empty. She told a parish priest
and he responded, “Fill it up with water and bless it yourself.”

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