At The Cross

This project was a collaboration with the Bronx Documentary Center.

Black and white images were shot on 35 mm film and color images were shot on a digital camera.

Lucero Romero, 33, is one of two nuns at Immaculate Conception Church in the South Bronx where she serves as the director of religious education. There, she tutors children, works closely with their parents, and leads bilingual workshops for a predominantly Latino congregation. 

Romero said the church helped shape her sense of self from a young age. Born in Mexico to a single mother, she said she struggled with her Catholic identity before becoming a nun. She crossed into the U.S. when she was eight and is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which provides temporary protections against deportation, but no path to citizenship. Romero said that to become a U.S. citizen, she would need to marry a U.S. citizen or have a child in the country–both of which contradict her vows to the church. With uncertainty surrounding the future of DACA renewals, it’s unclear whether she will be allowed to stay in the U.S. 

Since 1965, the number of nuns in the U.S. has declined by about 80%, from 180,000 to roughly 33,000 last year. In 2025, 82% of religious institutes reported no new members professing perpetual vows, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. As American-born vocations decline, many Catholic congregations increasingly rely on nuns born abroad to serve their communities, often with large immigrant populations. 

“We tend to forget history,” she said about the first churches established in the South Bronx. “The first sisters that came were immigrants. They were Italian. They were German, they were Polish.” Many of those sisters also established schools and hospitals, she said. Like past sisters who immigrated to the U.S, Romero balances her devotion and service to her community beyond the walls of Immaculate Conception Church.