Dear Mary:

Sister Dianna Ortiz suffered such horrific tortures that even professional journalists had a hard time writing the words of her experience. I shall not describe her tortures that we know about for they were too evil to be beyond words. Some of her tortures were so horrific that she, to this day, has not revealed them. It is miracle she survived at all. It is even a greater miracle that she did not go insane or at least become a multiple personality as means to cope with her horrors.

Yes, Sr. Ortiz had an abortion, something she deeply regretted and blamed herself for many years.  The National Catholic Reporter reported on her testimony before a Congressional Committee in 1998:

In a dramatic and poignant outburst, Ursuline Sr. Dianna Ortiz, 39, who in 1989 was abducted by Guatemalan security forces, then tortured and raped, told a June 24 Congressional hearing that as a result of the gang rape she became pregnant.

She had the pregnancy terminated.

The rape, "destroyed a life," said Ortiz, not referring to her own still-tortured existence. According to The Washington Post, Ortiz then asked rhetorically. "Am I proud of this decision? No." She then covered her face with her hands and fled from the hearing room.

She suffered great pain and remorse for killing her baby.

I found no evidence that she said anything like that she would have an abortion again if the circumstances were repeated. A reviewer of Sr. Ortiz's book, THE BLINDFOLD’S EYE: MY JOURNEY FROM TORTURE TO TRUTH, said:

Part of the torture was a gang rape by three torturers, which resulted in a pregnancy. Horrified, she arranged an abortion, only to add to her anguish when she reflected on what she had done and decided she had committed an unforgivable sin. She would not even open her Bible, fearing she would find words of judgment and reproach. “I would hear God -- a God I believed in just enough to fear -- telling me I was evil.”

We can have nothing but great compassion for this poor woman. The Church takes great compassion upon her.

According to Church teaching concerning culpability for grave sin, Sr. Ortiz would certainly not be held responsible for her actions. Her actions to abort her child were under the severe psychological trauma and post traumatic stress disorder. There is no way she could be making a truly unimpaired act of volition to abort her child. Her self-condemnation and severe guilt over this that she had for many years, and which still haunts her today, proves her regret.

The only words I can find that Sr. Ortiz made about abortion was at the end of her book where she comes to the conclusion that no one has a right to judge women who have abortions.

She is absolutely right. We have no right to commit the crime of rash judgment against any woman for killing her child. We do not know what is going on within her mind and soul. Only God knows that and only God can judge that. We can judge the act, which is objective moral evil, but we cannot judge the heart of the woman.

We can judge motives only that are declared. If a woman says she is getting an abortion as a form of birth control, that motive can be judged, but we can never judge another's heart on this or any other issue.

As to Ursuline Order: Even if Sr. Ortiz had committed abortion with consciousness of mind and positive and unimpaired volition, that does not have anything to do with the Ursuline Order.

Perhaps you did not mean to do this, but I am sorry, Mary, to ask such a question about how to tell when orders are in schism, a question which in the context of your post casts an innuendo of schism against the Ursuline Order, is gravely sinful on your part. It is the crime of rash judgment. I suggest you bring this up with your confessor if this is what you are suggesting.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary