The tell-all autobiography of a former nun has left the Catholic Church in Kerala squirming in embarrassment, like a pair of earthworms picked out of the mud while having sex. While it basked in the global recognition brought by Sister Alphonsa's sainthood last year, Sister Jesme's rebellion has brought exactly the opposite kind of attention. The 52-year-old's exposé comes at a time when the Church is already smarting from the arrest of two priests and a nun in the infamous Sister Abhaya murder case of November 2008.

Sister Jesme's Amen: Oru Kanyasthreeyude Athmakatha (Amen: Autobiography Of A Nun), published by Kottayam-based DC Books, has sold more than 2,000 copies in a month.

The Church is not buying it though, and has dismissed Jesme's charges of widespread sexual harassment and bullying as "trivial". Sister Jesme, however, insists she is "dedicated to Jesus and his ideals" despite her critique of the Church. "So many people have been calling up to congratulate me. Even my former sisters will read me. They didn't want me to go. My former students are enough to support me at this juncture," she told The Mag.

Jesme, who holds a doctorate in English from Calicut University, took a six-month sabbatical from her posting as the principal of St Mary's College, Thrissur, in order to write her book. When she finished the manuscript, she quit the college with four more years of service remaining. She also quit the Congregation of Mother Carmelite in August 2008. Her autobiography hit the stands in February 2009, and its descriptions of the sexual goings-on in the state's nunneries created a sensation.

"I wrote the book as a form of therapy," she says. "I wanted to put things in perspective before going ahead to the next stage of my life. I also wanted to perform my duty to society by telling them what goes on inside our convents."

Jesme claims that senior nuns forced her to see a psychiatrist. "They said I was short-tempered. But everybody becomes angry. I've seen so many nuns shouting at each other. They singled me out only because I was outspoken." The Church, however, maintains that it had a duty to run the college efficiently, and with Jesme at the helm, things were never smooth.

"I was denied justice," insists Jesme. "The mother-general said I was mentally ill. They wanted to put me in an asylum. I tried meeting the bishop. I was refused an audience. Then I knew I had no choice but to get out," she says.

Flesh is weak
Jesme's book is daring in its portrayal of repressed sexuality and its multifarious manifestations. She narrates her own experiences with a lesbian nun, who she says forcibly slept with her inside her convent room. She also describes how a respected priest stripped before her, forced her also to strip and then masturbated in front of her at his presbytery in Bangalore.

"All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss [1 Corinthians 16:20]," Jesme quotes a priest as telling her, after she confronted him with allegations that "he kissed almost everyone who went for one-on-one meetings." The underlying thesis of the book is that Christian institutions built on celibacy are teeming with homosexual and heterosexual proclivities.

"What happens outside the convents can also happen inside. We are also human beings like other people. We are not spiritual enough despite all the Bible-reading. We are affluent. With affluence comes power. And when you wield power, you are exposed to worldly pleasures. And that includes sex," Jesme explains.

But she hastens to add, "I don't think celibacy is impractical. There are hundreds of priests and nuns who keep their vows for the love of Christ. Look at me. I have come out of the convent. But I don't want to marry. I remain a nun. The problem arises when people take a vow of celibacy before they understand what it is. This can even happen with marriage vows. When people are not sure of what they want, they make mistakes."

Kingdom of hate
"There is so much hate among the nuns. There are nuns who avoid eye contact with each other. Even the convent dissuades camaraderie between nuns lest they become intimate. There's so much distrust. Worse, there's no democracy. We are brainwashed from our early days with catechism and innumerable retreats," says Jesme.

Jesme endorses the stand of the Kerala Women's Commission (KWC), which wanted to bar minor girls from becoming nuns, and sought ways to rehabilitate former nuns and ensure their share in the family inheritance. "People should be mature enough to decide for themselves. Nowadays, different congregations are chasing potential novices even before they finish school. 'If we don't get her, somebody else might,' is their thinking," she says.

The KWC's recommendation, predictably, never saw the light of day.

Repent, repent
Jesme says she is not against the Church, and only wants it to mend its ways. "I'm just a tool. Don't you think all these debates will finally lead to a change in mindset? God will use a prophet whenever needed," she says, adding, "The Church's initial response to the book was painful. The very fact that they termed it 'trivial' shows where the problem is. What is significant to me is trivial to the Church and its men, and what is trivial to me is significant to them." Jesme claims in her book that it was her objection to the charging of capitation fee in Church-run self-financing colleges that led her superiors to brand her as mentally ill.

House on a rock
Syro-Malabar Church spokesman Father Paul Thelakatt, who interviewed Jesme for the Church mouthpiece, says: "Jesme is still committed to Jesus and the Gospels, going by the title of her book. But, for whatever reasons, she doesn't want to be with us anymore. She thinks her congregation is not measuring up to its values. She has rebelled. The Church, for its part, doesn't want anyone to stay in a convent against her will. But convent life definitely implies restrictions and those are self-imposed. The issues Jesme has raised are nothing new. Most of her arguments are trivial."

Thelakatt, however, does not deny Jesme's allegations of deviancy. "We can't generalise. There may be aberrations. We are not angels. We are all subject to temptations. Jesme shouldn't have had any false notion that she wouldn't feel temptations inside the four walls of the convent. We have to overcome them. Some people can't do it," he told DNA in Kochi.

He insists that the Church has internal mechanisms to deal with any deviancy. "We know things are not foolproof. We are dealing with weak men and women. If somebody makes matters difficult for others, naturally, there are corrective measures. That's what happened in Jesme's case," he says, implying that Jesme herself was a 'deviant', though not in the sense her book talks about deviancy.

Jesme, meanwhile, still considers herself a nun, and hasn't 'recovered' her original name, Meamy Raphael. She lives alone in an apartment on the outskirts of Kozhikode, watching her book sales go up and scrapping former students on Orkut. s_don@dnaindia.net

Don Sebastian DNA