National Vocations Week: The contemplative order that welcomes sisters with Down syndrome

CNA Staff, Nov 7, 2024 / 07:00 am

As the U.S. Church celebrates National Vocation Awareness Week Nov. 3–9, a prioress of a contemplative community in France remembers how it took years for the Church to recognize the religious vocations of women with Down syndrome. Now, almost 40 years later, Mother Line says the Little Sisters, Disciples of the Lamb community is thriving, welcoming religious sisters with Down syndrome and able sisters alike. 

“God speaks to the hearts of all,” Mother Line told CNA. 

The community is based in Le Blanc in the Indre region of France, where it has been since 1995. The Little Sisters reside in a priory in the French countryside and live a life of prayer and work. It is the first community in the Catholic Church to invite women with Down syndrome to join religious life. 

The community was founded in 1985. Sister Veronique, who has Down syndrome, had been turned away by several religious communities but continued to feel called to religious life. Then she encountered Mother Line, who remembers that before she became a religious, she “was looking for a religious vocation with ‘the little ones.’” 

The two women began their community in a small village in Touraine, becoming an established religious institute of contemplative life in 1999 and ultimately moving to Le Blanc. Today, there are nine sisters and one American postulant in the order. The community also includes women who do not have Down syndrome who help to support all the sisters. 

The community members focus on “prayer and work” by balancing their contemplative lives of prayer with daily work on a farm, where they make many all-natural products. 

The community’s charism is “a life given to the smallest and the poorest,” and the sisters look to St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and St. Benedict for spiritual guidance. 

“Our spiritual guides are St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus — do all the little things through love — and St. Benedict: ‘Ora et labora,’ pray and work,” Mother Line explained. “Work gives balance to the Little Sisters.”

A day in the life of the community includes daily Mass and prayers coupled with work activities. The sisters keep busy cultivating gardens, weaving scarves and bags, and crafting herbal teas. They have a bee farm and produce honey as well as make pottery. They launched their newest product this year — a line of skin care and cosmetics. 

“We have developed a cultivation of medicinal plants and manufactured high-end cosmetics,” Mother Line said. “One hundred percent natural, shipped throughout Europe and maybe America one day.”

The sisters launched their skin care, which includes balms and serums, on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes earlier this year with the tagline “The drop of love for your skin.” While it does not entirely support their mission, selling a variety of products on their website helps the monastery be more self-sufficient. It also helps create balance of work and prayer for the sisters. 

“It’s important for Little Sisters with Down syndrome to help them grow in something that fulfills them: Nature and prayer provide the right balance,” Mother Line said.

The sisters distill roses with a culture of 700 Damascus rosebushes and other aromatic plants, she said. A neighbor of the priory sold a field to the sisters when he retired, enabling the Little Sisters to plant a field of Damascus rosebushes. The rare type of rose serves as an aroma in their mists and skin care products. 

“Our brand is called Still’Amoris, which means ‘the drop of love,’” Mother Line said. “This allows Little Sisters to spread the love that people with Down syndrome bring to the world and reminds the world that this is the most important love.” 

Two years ago, Mother Line called on American women to consider a vocation with the Little Sisters — both women with Down syndrome and those without. She told CNA that Americans have a different outlook on those with Down syndrome than Europeans do. 

“They are considered as human beings [in America],” Mother Line said. “In Europe, most people with Down syndrome go to live in institutions. It is right that in the United States, people with Down syndrome stay in their family.”

The prioress highlighted the prevalence of abortion in Europe where the number of children born with Down syndrome has declined by 11% over past decades as prenatal scans became more popular. Doctors advise abortion when prenatal scans indicate Down syndrome.

“In Europe and France, abortion is omnipresent. Especially in children with Down syndrome — they no longer have the right to live in France and Europe,” Mother Line said.

The U.S. has a similar problem. One in every 700 children born have Down syndrome in the U.S., but according to the National Institutes of Health, between 67% and 85% of unborn children with Down syndrome are aborted.

“What a shame that the medical team says that it will be a burden for the family while the child with Down syndrome unites the whole family: They have a gift for this because they bring love,” she continued.

Mother Line said she believes children with Down syndrome “have a message to say to the world.”

“We are sure that God will never abandon the little ones,” she said.