That was good news that the Vatican has ended its investigation of American nuns ("Vatican ends its years-long investigation of American nuns," April 16). It is an historic decision.
Go back to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It called upon Catholics to end their isolation and to engage with contemporary culture. No one took this directive more seriously than the American nuns. They left the convents and reached out to the poor and marginalized of society, founded schools for the poor like Mother Seton Academy and Sisters' Academy here in Baltimore, worked for social justice in the remote reaches of Central and South America.
Meanwhile, the American bishops were traveling in a different direction. Their agenda became one of doctrinal purity. All men, by the way, they stood firm against the very idea of women holding office in the church, attacked Obamacare for its acceptance of contraception, in Maryland mounted an unsuccessful campaign to repeal the gay marriage legislation and instigated the Vatican to investigate the American nuns for insufficient concern with church doctrine.
And now it has ended. One might say Pope Francis has ended it. Pope Francis who made has the poor the central point of his papacy.
John C. Murphy, Baltimore