What makes a young woman become a nun in 2012? For Clara, who’s 24, it was as it has been for women for generations through time: she simply felt, from her childhood, that this was what she was called to do. ‘I remember dressing up as St Clare for a church event when I was about six,’ she remembers. ‘And I suddenly thought: this is what I’d like to be. And from then on, it was always there in my mind.’

Through school and university the feeling never went away. And after graduating last year, as her friends from university headed off to their first jobs, Clara embarked on life as a postulant in one of the strictest enclosed orders in England – St Cecilia’s Benedictine Abbey in Ryde on the Isle of Wright.
People have this idea that nuns are very solemn people but in fact they’re so happy
She’s not alone: after a period when the number of women entering religious life dropped to an all-time low in the UK, the figures appear to be on the rise. And what’s more, the women who are joining orders are quite likely to be relatively young. According to the National Office for Vocation, the number of women under the age of 40 in formation in religious orders has risen from 42% to 70% over the last five years: so of 20 women who are currently training to be a nun in England and Wales, 14 are in their 20s and 30s. Also interesting is that the orders which are reporting the most interest from young women are traditional, habit-wearing orders.

Vicky Mitchell, a TV producer who spent six months filming Clara and other young women who were embarking on or who had recently entered religious life, admits to being surprised when she realised this was the trend. She had, she said, assumed that it would be the more relaxed, ‘modern’ style convents that would be attracting new recruits. But in fact it’s enclosed communities like St Cecilia’s, as well as communities like the Leeds-based Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, who work with the homeless, that seem to appeal to the new generation of potential postulants.

One of the professed sisters interviewed in Vicky’s programme was Sister Jacinta, who is a member of the Franciscan community in Leeds. She grew up in Northampton, and before joining the order, when she was in her late 20s, she worked as an occupational therapist. She says she worried about precisely how becoming a nun would change her life. ‘I think the fear was that if I gave everything up that I thought was making me happy then I would be miserable,’ she says.
The orders which are reporting the most interest from young women are traditional, habit-wearing orders
Having been a sister for eight years, she has now made her final vows – and is, she says, incredibly happy. ‘I can really, honestly say in my heart that I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else,’ she says.

For the families of young women like Clara and Jacinta, ‘losing’ a daughter, a sister or a niece is a huge wrench. ‘At St Cecilia’s each nun can write to her family only once a month,’ says Clara. ‘You’re allowed to receive letters anytime, but you can’t write more often than that – and of course you can’t just get out your mobile and call them the way you would have done in the past.’

Visits, too, are rare. ‘Your family can come to see you for a week once a year, or they can come three times a year for three days each time,’ she explains. And yes, she says, it’s difficult to get used to surviving without them. ‘We’re a very close family, and it was so hard getting used to them not being just at the end of the phone,’ she explains. ‘Christmas was especially difficult – my youngest brother apparently asked for ‘Clara’ at the top of his list of what he was hoping for. That really got to me...’ Having said that, she says, Christmas in the abbey last year was a wonderful experience. ‘We did so many cool things - it was so lovely,’ she remembers. ‘Our Christmas vigil started at 10pm and Mass started at midnight and went on until 2am - and then when it was over we had hot chocolate and cookies in the middle of the night.’

In general, says Clara, being at St Cecilia’s was unlike anything else she had ever experienced. ‘It’s a completely amazing way of life – so totally different from most other ways of living your life,’ she says.

‘The overriding impression you have of it is of complete simplicity. And the simplicity has a deep meaning; and the whole emphasis is on prayer.’
The women who are joining orders are quite likely to be relatively young
The sisters at St Cecilia’s pray for seven hours a day – and that’s before you count their hours of private prayer. ‘It’s a very spiritual, very prayerful, way of life – even work is a form of prayer,’ explains Clara. ‘And it’s a long day too – you get up very early. The professed sisters are up at 4.30am although postulants don’t get up until 6.20am on most days – and you keep going until 8.30pm at night which might not sound late, but when you’ve been up that early it does seem a very long day.’

What impressed Clara hugely, right from the start, was how immensely happy the atmosphere of St Cecilia’s was: she was struck, she says, by how joyful the nuns always were. ‘People have this idea that nuns are very solemn people but in fact they’re so happy – they’re beaming all the time. During recreation, which is twice a day for half an hour each time, people chat and share news and talk about their families.’

Clara says she ‘absolutely loved’ her time at St Cecilia’s – and yet, after just a few months with them, she left. Today, a few more months down the line, she still finds it difficult to put into words quite why that was. ‘I found being without my family really tough,’ she says. ‘But leaving was very hard – and I’m still finding it difficult knowing what will happen next, because I so believed that St Cecilia’s was where God wanted me to be – and if not there, then where?’

What she’s convinced about, says Clara, is that she definitely does have a vocation to the religious life. ‘I still feel very strongly that it’s what I’m called to do,’ she explains. ‘It’s been confusing for me to find that the place I loved so much wasn’t, after all, the right place for me to live out that vocation.

‘But I’m going to keep exploring – I’m going to visit more communities in the UK, and I’m going to keep on looking. I feel very strongly that when it’s the right time God will show me. And I also know that I’m going to accept His will, whatever it turns out to be.’