Word: mansour
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...heart, I'm still a nun." So said Agnes Mary Mansour last week as she announced plans to leave the Sisters of Mercy of the Union rather than step down as Michigan's director of social services...
Appointed to the job last December, Mansour, 52, originally had the blessing of Detroit's Archbishop Edmund Szoka, even though her agency would administer $5.7 million a year for abortions. But Szoka insisted that the nun state her opposition to such outlays, since the church holds abortion to be an "unspeakable crime." Although personally against abortion, Mansour declined to do so because she thinks that in fairness, poor women should get aid if abortion is legal. In February, Szoka demanded that she resign; when Mansour and her order resisted, the archbishop took the issue of disobedience to Rome...
Under orders from Pope John Paul II, the Vatican appointed Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua of Brooklyn, N.Y., a canon-law expert, to inform Mansour that she must obey Szoka and quit the state post...
Last week the bishop delivered the message in person. Mansour, who had hoped to solve the matter by getting a leave of absence from the order, pondered the situation for 80 minutes; she then received permission to leave the Sisters of Mercy in order to keep the state position...
...modern nuns like Sister Agnes Mansour [March 21] want to run the world, they ought to make it on their own and not on the back of the church. Now that they have given up the veil, they believe they can serve two masters...