A FORMER nun has claimed she and her fellow sisters were forced to
write vows in their own blood, self-flagellate every night and eat
spoiled food.
The unnamed nun, who said she was 17 at the time,
revealed how she and others at a convent in southern Italy in the 1990s
would pierce their skin with needles before writing on card.
She told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: "We were happy to do it."
The nun provided the newspaper with a postcard with the Virgin Mary covered in a brownish-red substance she claims was blood.
She said: “We were told it made our union with God stronger and more authentic.”
The sisters at a Franciscan 'Sister of the Immaculate' convent were
told to destroy the vow cards, but the nun claims she disobeyed the
order and kept two of them.
The nun also said her sisters were regularly fed rancid food, such as out-of-date yogurt and canned meat.
She
said: “They told us if we ate it with obedience, nothing bad would
happen to us, but it wasn’t true because I used to get serious stomach
problems.”
She added that sisters were encouraged to
self-flagellate every night for as long as it took to say five Hail
Marys, five Our Fathers and five Glory Be to the Fathers.
The Vatican is investigating the claims, but the order’s leader, the Rev Stefano Maria Manelli, denied any wrongdoing.
Manelli, 82, created the order in 1982, and it has nine convents in Italy and six more across the globe.
No comments:
Post a Comment