Cor orans-Inglese

Praying heart, guardian of gratuity, wealth of apostolic fruitfulness and of a mysterious and multiform holiness is the feminine contemplative life in the Church. The contemplative life of nuns, rooted in the silence of the cloister, from its beginnings through a mysterious apostolic fruitfulness enriches the Church of Christ with fruits of grace and mercy. With our gaze turned to this unique form of the sequela Cristi, Pope Pius XII, on November 21, 1950, published the Apostolic Constitution Sponsa Christi Ecclesia with feminine monastic life as the object. In this document, the Roman Pontiff recognized the monasteries of nuns as true autonomous monasteries and advocated the birth of the Federations as structures of communion to overcome the isolation of monasteries in order to favor the conservation of the common charism and collaboration in various forms of reciprocal help, giving indications for the accommodata renovatio of what was defined as the Institute of nuns, above all on the issue of cloister. In fact, Pope Pius XII anticipated for the monasteries of nuns what the Second Vatican Council would ask a few years later of all the religious institutes.