The highly-anticipated and controversial Vatican investigatory report for US nuns has finally ended on Tuesday. The dreaded investigation, which started with criticisms of the American community of Catholic sisters, has concluded with a report praising the nuns for their "dedicated and selfless" service instead of any disciplinary measures.

Prior to its conclusion, the Vatican report for US nuns has ignited several protests from outraged Catholics. When the investigation was announced six years ago, the New York Times reported it created fears, anger and mistrust among women in religious communities and convents across America.

The Vatican report, which was released on Tuesday, is mostly an appreciative statement that recognized the achievements and the challenges the US nuns were facing given their decreasing population. According to Time, the report also pointed out the total number of apostolic women that is currently at 50,000 had remarkably declined by 125,000 since the mid-'60s. The investigation also discovered that the nuns had reached an average age of mid-to-late '70s, highlighting an incessant widening age gap with fresh recruits.  

"Many sisters expressed great concern during the Apostolic Visitation for the continuation of their charism and mission, because of the numerical decline in their membership," the Report on the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Religious Women in the United States of America said.

The investigation, known as an apostolic visitation, was instigated in 2008 under Pope Benedict XVI with only an elusive explanation. As reported by the Washington post, the report was viewed as an attack on the mission of American nuns, who usually work with marginalized communities, in the academe and the hospitals.

However, during the Vatican investigation report, several leading US nuns said their attitudes have changed from being angry, hurt, bewildered and betrayed into feeling a less defensive.

"It doesn't justify the way it was done, but we found our mature voice. In speaking what we believe, we discovered our true selves," Mary Ann Zollman of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, stated. "This wasn't about one religious congregation or religious organization. It was about all of us together. . . . It created a sense of solidarity and sisterhood. And the same was true with our relationship with the laity - we discovered a communal vision for the church and the world."

The Vatican report did not only underscore the diminishing number of US nuns. According to Crux, the report also upended expectations that it would take a more critical stance of American nuns for a rising "secular mentality" and "a certain 'feminist' spirit," as one Vatican official warned in 2009.

The Vatican usually orders an apostolic visitation of a particular entity in the case of a serious problem or scandal, but there was no clear cause in the Vatican report on US nuns.

The Vatican report released in Rome on Tuesday wraps one of the two investigations of US nuns started by the Vatican in recent years. The other is a review of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group representing about 80 percent of American nuns.