S1: Ep 5 - Particular Friendship

Before we start, I want to let you know that in this episode we discuss the topic of sexual abuse. Listener, discretion is advised.

I really wanted that life that Jesus had of really living poverty, chastity, obedience, service.

Velut vows of poverty chastity obedience, and the missionaries of charity have a fourth vowl, wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.

Mother Teresa was very concerned about the vow of chastity, almost to the point of paranoia. You're never supposed to get too close to one sister. You were married to the crucified Christ. There was so much fear around anything connected with human connection.

How mistress of Earth, how heavenly queen, how virgin of virgins, all chaste and serene.

You know, there are some very decent sisters here, and you're the best. There were regulations against what was termed particular friendship, and I didn't really catch the subtext at the time. She says, you want to get to know me better, and she's asking about my family. You're going to give up intimate relationships by a vow of chastity, Yesterdy, you must not have any particular friendships.

For Coco Punch and iHeartRadio. This is the Turning America Lands Part five particular friendship.

So I've just gotten into camp.

And I'm heading to I'm not really sure where, because I've spoken to a couple of the sisters on the phone and they have the ridiculously vague about where I could find them.

Chelby such Dave as a reporter in western India. We hired her to find a woman who used to be a missionary of charity and is still a sister, but with a different organization. This woman were trying to find. I called the house where she lived several times before I got her on the phone, but once I started to explain why I was calling, she quickly ended the conversation. Now, the other sisters in her group don't want to tell us anything, even where they're located.

They won't tell me where I can reach up. They won't tell me where I can find her or when. They won't give me the address of their residents and where their order works.

Out of the woman Chavi's trying to find is Niobi, the bold nun transferred to Mary Johnson's convent in Rome. The nun who told Mary I love you.

I've got two envelopes with me. There are two versions of the letter.

She has two drafts of a letter for Niobi in case Chavy can't actually talk to her. One of them's intentionally vague if we have to hand it to someone other than Niobi who might read it.

The second letter is more explicit in the allegations and that I have put in an envelope that's a strictly confidential letter.

This woman were trying to reach Niobi. She first entered Mery Johnson's life in nineteen eighty seven.

She walked in with his presence that was so unlike what most of the missionaries of charity had, and so she caught my attention.

Mary was twenty nine years old, Niobi was thirty nine. Niobi's not her real name, by the way. At this point, Mary had been with the EMCs for a decade, and for all those years, she'd been doing everything she could to center her life on love. Love was the point. It's why she joined the MCS in the first place. It's what she believed people needed most.

And I think maybe because I had felt excluded in many of the different places I was and while my family was a very loving family. When I was growing up, there wasn't a lot of like I love you. There was doing things together, there was doing things for each other. I had that kind of like whole, a little bit like many many people do. I think, you know, we all longed to be loved, to be appreciated, to be seen, and not just for the things that we can do, but for who we are.

Then one day, while Mary hung her clothes to dry, Naobi whispered in her ear, sister, Donata, I love you. The clothespin fell for Mary's hand.

Does she mean like I love you the way I'm supposed to love all the sisters Jesus said, love one another as I have loved you. No, I don't think that's what she means. She's looking at me with this big smile in her eyes. She's waiting for an answer. She's what she do I And she picks up the clothespin that I dropped, and her arm brushes my arm, and I feel like this electric shock kind of thing

Like No, so you were happy.

I was happy.

I was confused. I was happy. I was But you know, what do you do the first time somebody says I love you in a way that sounds romantic and meaningful and personal. Hell, that felt good.

One afternoon, the sisters were drinking tea, and Iobi slyly leaned over and told a joke in Mary's ear. When they all stood up to pray, the Superior gave Mary a weird look. Now the Superior wasn't just any mc Her name was Sister Joseph Michael. She was highly ranked in the order and pretty tight with Mother Teresa. In fact, Mother Teresa reportedly saw Sister Joseph Michael as a possible replacement for her one day. Now, Mary started to worry.

And I was so totally floored, because we are always told that the constitutions are the voice of God. Mother Teresa had written the constitutions that the story goes on her knees by candlelight, after all the other sisters had gone to sleep.

Mary's job was to update the constitutions to reflect current canon law. Canon law is basically the Catholic Church's internal legal system. When a new code of canon law is issued, Catholic orders review and update their own sets of guidelines. Mary was updating the MC guidelines after Pope John Paul the Second made revisions in the nineteen eighties. These canon law updates don't happen very often. Pope Francis just released new canon Law Revision twenty twenty one, and those were

And when I was with Niobi, I finally felt myself as lovable and loved. This kind of thing I was trying to do for everybody else all the time, to make them feel seen. This was the center of what I was supposed to be doing, and for the first time I was feeling it for myself.

In the week's followed, Mary talked to God about her predicament. She also thanked God because Naobi felt like a gift.

How can this not be from God? If it's making me feel how God wants us to feel. God wants us to feel loved, How could that not be from God.

As time passed, Naobi got older, she dropped the sister and just started calling Mary Donata.

She's not saying, sister, donat to the way we were always supposed to do, so just dropping that sister was so intimate.

She'd brush past Mary in the hall, touch her foot under the table. This made Mary nervous, really nervous. There was no privacy in the convent. Everyone knew everyone's business. But Naobi didn't stop, and Mary didn't stop her.

We would bow down and touch our heads to the floor of the chapel. It was a tradition that was adopted from India, and it was really bad because sometimes she would get right behind me and she would grab hold of my feet when she'd bow down, and again, it felt kind of delicious, and at the same time, if anybody saw that, that would be a horrible It could be awful because I had been having this crisis of conscience because even though her love felt so good and it felt so much like God, and part of

But she didn't have the chance. Sister Niobi came with her own news. Niobi had been instructed not to tell anyone, but she was being transferred that same day. She had a new assignment in Napoli.

I was so.

Relieved because I had been It kind of like solved my problem, even though I knew I was going to miss her, and all of these different things whirling through my head at once. And she comes close to me and she says, never forget our secret, never forget that I love you, And I told her I love you too, the last words I said to her before she left.

Mary finished updating the constitutions, but now she creped something. Those rules didn't allow something small, even just a hand on her.

Arm, you know, even like the sign of peace at mass, where people would normally shake hands, we do that kind of nama stay sort of thing where you join your hands in front of your chest and bow to each other. So really nothing, nothing as far as touch goes.

One day, a van from Napoli showed up at the convent with supplies, and when Mary went to greet it, Naobi was there unpacking the boxes. Mary was thrilled. She asked Naobi to come inside with her.

And I said, you know, I've been thinking about something and I want to ask you something, and she says sure, ask I said, will you hold me? She says hold you? I said, yeah, just put your arms around me for a minute, and she kind of looks at the windows and I maneuver us into a place where nobody will see us and close a couple blinds. And then she puts her arms around me, and it feels so good. And she leans over and she kisses the top of my sorry covered head. I could hear her heart beating,

Naobi got back in the van and left. It would be three years before Mary saw her again.

So, like most of you, I used to be a nun, very relatable. That's very relatable and stand up comedy to get up and start to talk about how you used to be a nun And I used to be ann with the outfit and everything.

Kelly Dunham followed her calling all the way from the missionaries of charity to the stage.

So the first question is, oh like the sound of music. No, there were less children in matching outfits and less Nazis in my story.

Kelly lives in Brooklyn. She lasted about two years as a sister with the MCS. To use her words, she flunked out. She had the hardest time with the valve of chastity, not the sex part. That wasn't it. It was the way the emces took the vow so far, avoiding all friendship. Initially, the Order sounded like a fantasy women working together toward a common goal of caring for others. Instead, Kelly says she would be asked to leave her humanity behind, but it definitely makes for good material.

One time we got up in the morning and Sister Melager told us that if we really loved Jesus, we would mortify ourselves by going to the bathroom only once a day. Now I thought she was kidding, so I laughed and said, okay, just call me Sister Mary bladder infection. She didn't think that was funny.

Kelly joined the Order for idealistic reasons, but when she looks back, she knows she was a little different from the stereotypical MC. First off, she didn't grow up Catholic. She was raised as an evangelical Christian.

I'm also, you know, like a very queer person. Even though I did not know it then, I just knew I didn't fit in very well.

She first got involved with the Missionaries of Charity in nineteen ninety as a volunteer in Haiti. Most aid organizations in Haiti frustrated her. They didn't seem to give Haitian people a voice. But as she saw the MCEs listened to what locals had to say. She loved how the Sisters looked in their sories, how they worked so hard, how strong they were.

By that spring, I was in love not with like one sister, but like with all of them.

Before she could join the MCS, she had to convert to Catholicism.

As it turns out, they kind of insist on that thing.

While Kelly was becoming a Catholic, she volunteered with the Sisters in Miami, and eventually she got wored. The MCS had accepted her she would start her training in New York. So the Sisters in Miami had her over for Tea to say goodbye.

And they made me this card. You know. I opened it up and it was like, welcome to your beautiful vocation and it said something like you know, your love of Christ must destroy you completely. And then it had like little pictures, little like red drops off the words, and they're like, oh, it's the blood of Jesus, Like wow, this is so gruesome.

Your love of Christ must destroy you completely. One of the professed Sisters pulled Kelly aside.

She said, if at some point you feel like they're really breaking your head, then you just leave, just run, and just go.

There's one story from the convent that really sticks out to Kelly. It's on her mistress told over and over again as this inspirational tale. A superior walks into a chapel of praying sisters and instead of saying anything, she writes a message on a chalkboard.

Please pray for the father of sister Mary whoever, he's very ill. And then that's how she found out that her father was sick. And then fifteen minutes later, the superior came in wipe that off the black board and wrote, please pray for the father of sister whoever.

Rip.

So that's how she found out how her father.

Died, and the superior didn't say anything else the end.

That's the story that just seems needlessly cruel. And she said that sister just really trusted Jesus and really trusted her superior that much like those are the stories you hear when somebody wants to tell you an inspirational story. You know that's a wacko for a inspirational story.

And another story from her mistress. A sister finds out her entire family was killed in the Rwandan Civil War. After a few tears, she never mentions it again.

And that has held out this kind of the gold standard, that she trusted Jesus so much that she never had an emotional expression about it after that. But I think the mission is a charity. Like your feelings were just supposed to be irrelevant and we're not giving you information. There were just things that you pray to get rid of. But people have feelings, and the feeling is actually our information, and it's just so not compatible with the way humans are.

I'm really good with kids. It's one of my strengths.

This is Mary Anderson, not to be confused with Mary Johnson. There are a lot of Mary's in this story. Like the other Mary, this one worked with kids as part of her service.

Work, and I love them and I connect it with them, and I would play with them.

And she skipped with them, and I was.

Told that that was wrong. I wasn't conducting myself as

Not every former MC sister sees detachment as a bad thing. Joan Worster says, it's incredibly valuable.

I think I got a great relationship with God through all of this. Even though there was some suffering involved, I feel like it was the best experience of my life. The main thing was not having anything. That was tremendous for me because I have no attachment to anything at this point in my life. It taught me so much for detachment, even from objects, from objects, from people. I always say this to people, and I think it's hard

Makes sense, I think. So that's such an interesting concept for me, and I think I'm probably pretty attached.

But I can love. The thing about love for me is I can love so much more because I'm not attached. If I have my husband for as long as I have him, if he were to die, my life would not change. It would change in what I would have to deal with, you know, depression or sadness, but it wouldn't change my love for him, you know what I'm saying. So, so that way, it's kind of like a for me, it's a release of life, but I get to live the life.

It sounds peaceful, it is. Any former sisters we spoke to think this forced detachment is crippling. They say it's a contradiction to be asked to love and help others and also remain emotionally distant. They struggled with this rule against friendship or what's called particular friendship.

Which is like kind of the euphemism for like none on non action. But even when people had kind of platonic friendships, they'd often send people away because they just didn't want people to be connected to each other.

Kelly says MC's weren't just worried about particular friendships. Appearance and demeanor were also scrutinized.

They have a lot of talk about like how our lady was very feminine.

You know.

They say, like, oh, our lady, she was a real lady, you know whatever.

As sisters in Kelly's training class progressed to the next level, Kelly says she was held back.

The specific problem that they said that I had was that I had too much self esteem and insufficient docility. Even when I managed to say the right things, they would say that my body language was like I walked like my shoulders were angry as how they said it, which, you know, I think that could mean a lot of

All Kelly knew for sure was that she was stressed, so stressed that she says she got her period for four months straight.

Which I think was my body's way of being like get out, get out, you know. And we used like non disposable menstrual stuff, right like really, they just handed us diapers, you know, like the cloth diapers that we folded up and then we had to wash them by hand. And so one day we were cleaning the women's shelter in Harlem and there was a tampon sitting on top of one of the dressers and I was like, I'm gonna borrow that, and then I put it in my

She had to walk away. Kelly turned in her.

Sorry, it's sad because I did see sisters, even sisters who seemed like they were pretty happy with the life, just being destroyed by this constant need of mistresses and superiors to destroy the bonds between people.

The advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable.

In the late nineteen eighties, big changes were underway. The world was spinning, the Soviet Union was reforming. President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of the Berlin Wall.

Mister Gerbashow teared down this wall.

Meanwhile, the missionaries of Charity expanded into the Eastern Bloc. They opened a mission in Moscow, something unthinkable a few years before. Mary Johnson wanted to explore places she'd never been, to be part of the mission out in the world.

I wanted adventures. I wanted to go places and see things. And the constraints that had been placed on me had perhaps been done so in a loving manner, but they were constraints. Nonetheless.

She lived mostly in Rome. She studied theology, She did some clerical work. She sometimes visited a prison or helped it at home for expecting mothers. Ninety, she moved up the ladder again. Mary became a mistress for nuns nearing their final vows, the vows for life. But when she saw who was on the list of sisters she'd be responsible for, her heart stopped. Niobi.

Never forget our secret, Never forget that I love you.

Mary hadn't seen Niobi for three years. Now they'd be living under the same roof again, only this time Mary would be her mistress.

That was something I had never envisioned, never imagined that Niobe would be someone I would be responsible for. And I knew that I was just going to have to really make it very very clear to her that our relationship could not continue as it had. Okay, this is getting a little intense. RACA, I'm gonna go and come back in like a minute. Sounds good, Okay.

Mary had told me before that our interviews affected her more than she expected. Old nightmares returned, nightmares about her time as an MC, the kind of nightmares where you feel trapped. We actually took a break from interviews for a few months, and I thought, maybe we need to end this interview early.

Okay, here we go, let's see I did sleep much last night.

How are you doing?

Oh, it comes in waves. It's kind of intense. It's okay, okay. So when Iobi actually arrived at Zenship, she was pretty good in the beginning, you know, she kind of sat near me at the table a few times, but when a new sister came, that was kind of normal, so

That night, Mary hit herself harder with the discipline, and in the morning she pulled the spike Jain's extra tight around her waist. Mary had never been in a relationship before, and navigating boundaries is never easy, especially the first time, especially for a nun. Her firm response to Niobe seemed to work for a few days. Sister and Niobi gave her space, but not for long, she says. One time, Niobi shoved her into the office and held her against

It started to feel very manipulative. It started to feel very abusive. Even though I didn't have the word for it at the time, I just knew it wasn't right. I just knew it wasn't love, and I knew that she wasn't stopping. It just became totally out of control.

By now, Mary felt like she was pouring all her energy into keeping sister Naobi at bay, and she had twenty seven other sisters to manage. She needed to take care of all of them.

And at the same time, this part of me that wanted to be loved, but this didn't feel like love, and it was. It was awful. It was so confusing, it was horrible.

How would you characterize it now, you said abusive? Do you feel like she was assaulting you?

I do feel it's abusive. I do feel it's an assault. But clearly I was not giving consent. I made that really clear, over and over and over and over again, and she just wasn't hearing any of it. Finally to the point where she kind of wore me down.

Jellous sanctist.

Right according for the up.

And I have.

Reached my best to me sure.

At first, Chavey thinks she's found the soup kitchen where Niobi works. Turns out she hasn't. She's in a residential neighborhood, clearly not the right spot, so she starts asking around, Well, I'm.

Looking for the soup kitchen.

Oh, the soup kitchen.

I was told that this is the address.

Here's why we're going to such links to deliver this letter. These are Mary's memories as she expressed them to us. With intimate personal experiences like this, especially in an insular religious community, it's hard to substantiate all the details. I'm also aware of the power dynamic between Mary and Niobi. Mary became Niobe's mistress. Mary was in charge, and right now we only have her version of events. So I

The municipal office is on my right or.

Yes, please, thankfully. Chavvy randomly meets someone in the wrong neighborhood. Who knows where to go?

And she said, to ask anybody where are the mothers giving free food?

And they will tell you.

So off I go.

How are you.

So you're here every day on Sunday.

Eventually Chavvy finds the soup kitchen.

So I have a letter for her.

We will give her, but you know, they've asked me to make sure she gets it.

Yeah, sure, we will give sure.

No, I don't.

It's not that I don't trust you, of course, but I mean they've asked me to make sure that her name is Erica and they are in America.

Chevy speaks with the sister for quite a while. She asks if she can speak with Niobi directly.

She said she doesn't want to talk to anybody.

Finally, Chavvy hands over the letter.

But nobody else will read this letter because it's personal.

No, no, make our phone number.

Yeah, we just need confirmation.

And she has received it, and whatever she chooses to do is up to walk. Thank you God, thank you bye, thank you bye.

That's the last we've heard. We don't know for sure whether Niobi was given the letter. We haven't heard from her. As Mary tells the story, she was worn down, exhausted by the secret, and they relentless back and forth Naobe's pressure. She wanted it to stop. And then Mary says, Naobi approached her with a proposition, just one night together.

She was going on and on about how she wanted just one night to make me feel really good, and she promised that she would stop after that night. I wanted that more than anything. I wanted her to stop. I wanted her to stop.

So what ended up happening.

I went to her one night and I said, okay, this is the night.

After the sisters went to bed, Mary left her cot and crept to where Naobi slept. She touched Niobe's shoulder and whispered, tonight. I wanted tonight. She went upstairs and waited in a small room that wasn't being used. Then sister Niobi arrived. They lay on the bed, Niobi on top of Mary, face to face. Her weight was comforting, so were Niobe's lips on Mary's forehead, then her cheeks and her lips. I love you, Niobi whispered to Mary. I want you, I.

Need you, and she may me feel things I had never felt before. She it was my first experience of that sort of sexual relationship. And it did feel really good, of course it did. It was like, if this is a human love, how much bigger must God's love be? But the biggest thought I was having was okay, so now it's going to be over.

But it wasn't over, Mary says, and I will be ignored their agreement. She didn't staff, not at all.

She wanted more, and she's like, you must want more to of course you want more, And of course part of me did want more, but part of me didn't. And just again this whole confusion, because what happens when a human being who hasn't felt loved, who has very little idea of her sexuality, suddenly starts to discover those things. Of Course you want to know more, you want to

Mary says. She didn't know what to do. Niobe wouldn't leave her alone. Now she couldn't go to the superior because she'd have to admit she broke her rows. She didn't see it way out. One day, her superior approached her. She told Mary she needed to share a story and confidence it had happened at a general chapter meeting, the meeting for mc leadership. Mary Superior said that the sisters were all discussing the matters of the day, and at one point one of them read an anonymous letter aloud.

The sister who wrote this letter claimed that there was another sister who had forced herself on her, followed her around, had touched her in ways she didn't want to be touched, wouldn't listen to know.

Immediately, Mary thought of her own experience.

She said that this sister had done this from the time she was a novice before she took her first vows, that she found sisters in the Novisiat who were more senior than her, and she was doing similar things.

Finally, the Superior revealed that the letter was about Niobe. She thought since Mary was Niobe's mistress, she should know.

And after this letter was read, Mother stood up.

And Mother Teresa was more angry than the Superior had ever seen her. Mary assumed she was angry at Niobe.

Oh no, no, Mother wasn't upset that the sister was behaving this way. Mother was upset that anyone had written it, and then even that it had been read out loud at the chapter. What mattered to Mother was that someone's reputation had been destroyed, and that was kind of devastating to me.

Mary was angry, She thought, no wonder, Niobi, he's getting transferred. No wonder. Sister told us not to ask about the trouble Niobi had at her last convent. And when Mary learned who else Naobi targeted, she realized the sisters resembled her, joined at a young age, not likely to have had sexual experiences, more senior in the congregation, so if they were found out, Naobi wouldn't be blamed.

And sure enough, Mother said, it can't be this sister's fault, because the sister who is more senior, she is the one who should have the responsibility. She should know better, she should say no. And then, of course, if a senior sister says no, the junior sister will always obey that. And of course Naobe wasn't like that at all. And though Niobe was my junior, and at that point was even under me. She he was ten years older than I was and far more experienced in so many ways.

The more Mary thought about it, the more upset she got. Why had no one stopped her? How could superiors look the other way? How could Naobi have been allowed to take her first vows? Was it anyone watching?

I think there was definitely a trend in the missionaries of charity, and actually in the Catholic Church as a whole, of not paying attention to problems, denying problems, not wanting to see that they're there, wanting to blame them on an individual's weakness, and therefore saying, well, we're all weak, and so let's be forgiving. Let's be merciful. And of course mercy and love and forgiveness are the things that can change people. Love is one of the most powerful things.

What Mary did next was risky, but she says she had to stop Niobe from harming anyone else. She wrote to Mother Teresa and put her vocation on the line. She told her they'd broken the vow of chastity, that she firmly believed Niobe shouldn't take her final vows. After Mary sent the letter, a sister flew from Germany to Rome for the sole purpose of talking to Mary. It was one of the most influential sisters in the order,

This little plan was forming in the back of my head.

The two of them got into a car with a driver and they drove toward the coast where the hospital was.

And there were palm trees, and there was the sky and you could see the water off in the distance, and it was like a breath of freedom. It was like a way to breathe again. And I just wanted more and more of that air, that freedom, that life, that light.

When the sister went in for her appointment, Mary sat in the waiting room and reviewed her plan. She knew the facility, She tried to remember where the Lost and Found was. That's where she'd find normal clothes. She would change out of her sorry then make her way to one of the empty beach houses nearby. She would escape.

I thought, this is my chance. I'd just have to take it.

But just then the doctor and sister reappeared. The checkup was already over. Soon Mary was in the car heading back to the convent. After that day, she often gazed out the convent window. She stared at the back corner of the garden. She imagined digging a hole, crawling in and covering herself with dirt. She wrote in her notebook, Trapped, Trapped, Trapped. The turning is written by Aileen lance Lester and me. Our producers are Allen lance Lester and Emily Foreman. Our