Transnational congregations are ambiguous and complex social spaces as they are both divided (notably around the North–South axis) and united (around a same charism, a same founding figure). This article seeks to understand how sisters from Quebec and Central America belonging to the same transnational congregation construct their interpersonal relations, given that they live in a social field marked by both North–South domination and religious sisterhood. Based on two months of fieldwork within the congregation at the Order’s mother house in Quebec and at some of its mission houses in Honduras, it explores this issue through a brief presentation of the history of the congregation and an analysis of the discourses of the sisters interviewed. It concludes that the intra-congregational relationships are rooted in the continuous negotiation between the verticality of North–South domination and the horizontality of sisterhood. In the present context of vocational decline, the congregation faces two options: to decolonize or to remain trapped in contradictions that could stop it from adapting to its new reality.
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