Controversy arose in 2002 over the treatment of the Indian sisters who form a large percentage of the Order. This became public in 2002 when six Indian Sisters from different houses of the Order in Italy fled and approached a Benedictine abbot in Subiaco. At the abbot's request, Bishop Silvio Cesare Bonicelli of Parma issued a special decree, letting the fugitive sisters enter a monastery of Benedictine nuns. The abbot, was subsequently forced to resign from office by the Holy See for this, a highly unusual act.