Young nuns go for life with the vow factor

The habit is contagious. A small but growing number of young women choose poverty and chastity and career maternity

Claire Ainsworth, 24, was his cousin's wedding in August. He joined a monastery in Norfolk last year and was the first time I had seen her extended family since he left his home in Lancashire. "They were happy I made the decision, but they were a little disappointed. I was told that there was so much to me ... This could be a good local guy and do not want kids? "

Clara is not alone in the choice of poverty, chastity and obedience in careers, relationships and motherhood. It is part of a small but growing number of young women entering religious life. The trend is the subject of a BBC documentary, young nuns.

Producer Vicky Mitchell spent six months filming women like Clara, 24, while preparing to become nuns. A graduate of the language and philosophy, Clara, from the north-east England, was raised a Catholic. "We have always taken seriously our faith. There is only one aspect of our lives, our pictures of the vision of the world, "he said." I have always been encouraged to foster a relationship with God. " She was 18 and preparing to leave home for college when he started to think about their future. "I thought about marriage and what God wanted me to do with my life. I have the nagging feeling that maybe God wanted me to be a nun. This feeling never left me." In the program, graduated Clara, socialization, prayer and the purchase of long sleeves, blue robes and slippers that squeak in the corridors of the convent.

She visited the cloistered community, stay a while as a way to help decide if she was ready to become a nun. There are an increasing number of ways that young people can dip their toes in the religious life, as the weekend of discernment, mini-courses and retreats. A festival, Invocation, was launched last year to attract 16 - to 35-year-old men and women in the monasteries, orders, and seminars. Youth and 2000, a five-day retreat for Catholics between 16 and 30, Walsingham was held in the past year, with about 1000 participants.

National Office for Vocations Catholic Church (November) said that the age group of people with an interest in joining the priesthood or part of a religious community is getting younger. Now they are 16-18, but 10 years ago would have been 30 or 40. Sister Cathy Jones in November saw the change: "There seems to be an impulse, but it is very difficult to get to the bottom of what motivates There are many young women to consider the invocation were as young as 16 years independently from, .. saying that he thought God was calling him. Of the 40 youth, 20 were very young. "

Before she investigated young nuns, Mitchell assumed that the current generation of women who are looking for a more "relaxed" and "modern" religious life. "The surprising thing is that most were actively looking for something more traditional. They wanted a radical lifestyle quite different from everyday life." But he adds, that did not meet the stereotype thinking. She had friends, strong family ties and an active social life. They went out and had career. "What surprised me is how much like that."

sister Jacinta Pollard, 37, who joined the convent of St. Joseph of Leeds for nine years, also on the agenda. One can understand why people struggle with the idea of ??a young woman entering the religious life: "He seemed so radical and so different from what many of my peers were doing and what I would have gone to the university with. "

Ainsworth
• not appear in the documentary. He claims to be shy, but when we talk, can not stop talking effusively about life in a convent. She works as a teaching assistant at the School of the Sacred Heart boarding at Swaffham, Norfolk, founded by the Daughters of Divine Charity, an order of apostolic social work in the community. Although Clara leaves the convent to perform their duties, it has taken a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience.
• "I wanted to help people," he said. "People ask me why not become a teacher or a nurse instead, but I feel that God called me to do it this way."

Ainsworth has not led a sheltered life. It does not work for something. But she had a mixed experience of religion and faith experience "dark period" as a teenager. An only child, was raised Catholic, but was never passionate about it until high school: "A lot of people frowned on me to practice my faith, my label, but I do keep as much as you everything collapses. realize what is important to you, I know that God helped me in difficult times. "

She did not argue to enter the religious life with his father, he says, but "it must have had an idea. I have always asked me to take to convents or about the sisters. " At the age of 16, he began a spiritual journey as well as a literal, volunteering with the orders apostolic from Kenya to Kendal, and join the retreat that offers a time for reflection and prayer to help you decide if it is suitable for religious life. It was in Lourdes five times, including four as an assistant.

She was afraid to tell his father about his decision to join the convent - and was guilty of any grandchildren. I was so anxious to talk to him she wrote him a letter. "It was amazing. He called me in tears. He was not surprised at all.
"You grow up thinking that she will marry and have children. Think of something that is difficult to resolve. I ask what your children will look like, you long for someone to love and someone who loves you. But another person could never accomplish what we want. Only God can. I owe everything. "

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