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13 episodes listed below
Obedience, affection and life beyond the convent.
The Turning: The Sisters Who Left follows former Missionaries of Charity through convent rules, meaningful work and difficult departures. Narrated by Erika Lantz, it considers how religious commitment can coexist with coercion, and how leaving changes a person's relationship with faith, family and ordinary life.
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The Turning: The Sisters Who Left brings Mother Teresa's public image into contact with former sisters' memories of daily life in the Missionaries of Charity. A rule about taking a shower becomes a reprimand. A haircut marks commitment, while limits on touch and friendship make ordinary affection something that can require confession or concealment. Narrated by Erika Lantz, the series follows these details into larger questions about obedience, religious authority and the treatment of people serving a mission. Mary Johnson's story gives those questions a sustained personal focus, tracing her attachment to the order, growing conflicts and eventual departure. Her faith does not simply disappear at the convent door. The show follows the unsettled period afterward, when finding paid work, expressing sadness and reconnecting with family require adjustments that outsiders might never anticipate. Even microwave popcorn can feel unfamiliar after years inside. Sue Weber and Joan Worster, siblings who both became Missionaries of Charity, describe how family connection persisted under rules against preferential affection. Their experiences also reveal sharply different uses of authority, from support to belittlement and pressure that made leaving difficult. Service remains part of the picture. A guest's recollection of a dying man with AIDS being reunited with his family conveys the tenderness and purpose she found in the work. Elsewhere, former sisters question medical decisions, restrictions on spending and an approach to suffering that could place obedience above their judgment about care. Colette Livermore describes trying to leave while being told that her doubts were temptation, exposing how spiritual explanations could reinforce institutional control. The series examines cult comparisons without making the label a substitute for understanding the mechanisms former members describe. Its reporting on alleged sexual abuse considers documents, accounts from former sisters and responses from the order, including disputes over how allegations were handled. These are painful subjects, approached through measured narration and space for people to explain confusion, loyalty, shame and anger in their own terms. Catholic concepts receive plain explanations, including the dark night of the soul and the distinction between religious sisters and consecrated virgins. A conversation with Jenna Cooper extends the inquiry into a vocation she describes with conviction and joy, giving religious commitment another perspective. Across these stories, the show considers what happens when care for others, institutional demands and a person's own needs cease to fit together.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants personal stories about Catholic religious life alongside close examination of institutional power. The accounts of departure also offer a way to consider guilt, belonging and rebuilding a life after an all-consuming commitment.
What sets it apart: Suits a listener who wants scrutiny of Mother Teresa's order that also takes former sisters' love for the work seriously. Its attention to convent rules and ordinary life after departure makes the consequences of obedience concrete.
Thousands of women gave up everything to follow Mother Teresa, joining her storied Catholic order, the Missionaries of Charity. But some found that life inside this fiercely private religious order was not what they’d imagined. Former sisters who worked closely with Mother Teresa describe her bold vision and devotion to charity and prayer. But they also share stories of suffering and forbidden love, abuse and betrayal. If you make a lifelong vow, what does it mean to break it? What is the line between devotion and brainwashing? Can you truly give yourself to God?
Based on 8 episodes we listened to · November 2026
Former sisters' accounts make the consequences of religious obedience concrete, while preserving the faith and affection that complicate leaving.
The Turning: The Sisters Who Left makes religious obedience tangible through the smallest permissions: whom a sister can touch, what she can read, when she can contact her family.
Even a haircut carries theological weight here; bring your questions about who gets to decide God's will.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured look at vocation, delay, and church recognition.
This episode follows a woman's move toward consecrated virginity and keeps the story grounded in ordinary uncertainty. The strongest stretch is the run from teenage conviction to the discovery of canon law, along with the long-held mistake that she had to wait until 35.
A humane look at leaving religious life and rebuilding afterward.
The episode stays close to the shame, doubt, and practical strain that can follow leaving religious life. It works best in the small, specific moments: being asked why they left, feeling shut out, and trying to account for a near four-year gap in employment while entering the…
A careful look at sainthood, secrecy, and the strain beneath reverence.
The episode treats a convent in Rome, a dream of figurines coming alive, and the hidden letters behind Mother Teresa's sainthood as one uneasy whole.
A quiet, devastating account of how devotion and silence can be bent into coercion.
Silence hangs over Eli Anastasia Damidova, a former Missionaries of Charity nun, as he describes how a practice that once felt like prayer turned frightening after he left the order.
A careful origin story that follows Mother Teresa from loss to calling.
S1: Ep 3 follows Mother Teresa from family loss and religious calling into the life that made her famous. The episode works best when it lets the chronology do the heavy lifting: childhood grief, a teenage call, Calcutta under British rule, then the train ride where the voice…
Host Erika Lantz interviews Jenna Cooper, a 36-year-old canon lawyer and consecrated virgin in Winona, Minnesota, about a Catholic vocation that currently counts roughly 5,000 practitioners worldwide.
Kelly Dunham left with shame.
The Turning’s “Highway of Broken Glass” examines whether Missionaries of Charity practices fit cult criteria, including restricted contact with family and outside media.
Mary Johnson dreams of a potter.
Silence once felt holy.
Comedian and former nun Kelly Dunham tells producer Emily Foreman that making her mother laugh became an early use of comedy in their Wisconsin family.
Joan Worster and Sue Weber, sisters from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, entered the Missionaries of Charity after pursuing religious life in separate convents.
The story begins with a childhood shaped by loss.