A mid-life change for a woman committed to religious life
Photo: Freddie Herpin, Daily World)
Cheryl Devall 9:13 p.m. CDT September 16, 2014
OPELOUSAS – The large, eight-point Maltese cross Sr. Stephania D’Souza used to wear no longer hangs around her neck. Its replacement is a much smaller pendant that, with her black-and-white habit, continues to identify her as a nun.
The change symbolizes a permissible, but rare, switch within the Roman Catholic Church.
D’Souza — who spent decades with the Daughters of the Sacred Heart in her native India — has transferred to a new religious order, the Marianites of Holy Cross. That order maintains the Our Lady of Prompt Succor nursing home and the C’est La Vie Independent Living Center in Opelousas.
“Canon law” — the internal law of the Catholic Church — “allows it,” D’Souza, 60, said during a break from her work at the nursing home. “It doesn’t happen very often. You have to offer reasons to the congregation you’re leaving and the congregation you’re planning to join.”
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