Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, Expanding to California

By Valerie Schmalz

(CNA).- One of the fastest growing orders of women religious in the United States is expanding to California where the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, took over administration of a Sacramento Catholic school this school year.

Perhaps more significantly, the Dominican Sisters have outgrown the motherhouse in Ann Arbor, Mich., and are planning to build two new houses of formation in California and in Texas. Each would hold about 100. The order’s lifestyle intrigued Oprah Winfrey, who featured the sisters twice on her show in 2010. As a result they have been nicknamed the “Oprah nuns.”

“We had 22 young women enter in August, and we have had between 10 and 20 new vocations per year for the past five years,” said Sister Thomas Augustine, director of California Mission Advancement. “It has happened to us before that by the time we finished adding onto the motherhouse in Ann Arbor we were already out of room! This time we are hoping to stay ahead of things so we are planning for two new houses of formation.”

Founded in 1997 by four Dominicans from the Nashville Dominicans, just 31 of the 110 Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, have made final vows so far. The remaining religious are in various stages of formation or education and discernment, said Sister Thomas Augustine.

“We’re not turning anyone away. We’ll sleep on the floor. We’ll live in kitchenettes, closets and landings. We have in the past,” Sister Thomas Augustine said.

The land in Loomis near Sacramento was purchased by Fred and Joan Cordova, a couple who received a direct-mail piece and called in 2005 to say they wanted the order to come to California and would buy the sisters land.

There are now eight sisters in the Sacramento diocese. Four are teaching at Presentation School, an elementary school that saw its enrollment jump by 44 students to 196 when the sisters took over in the 2010-11 school year, said Kevin Eckery, spokesman for Bishop Jaime Soto. “This is the first increase in enrollment in five years,” Eckery said.

Under the city of Loomis’ planning and building regulations, the sisters expect their application to be approved Jan. 18 and after negotiating details and meeting regulatory requirements to be able to build by 2012, Sister Thomas Augustine said. Funding for construction still needs to be raised, she said.

The religious’ primary apostolate is teaching. Sisters are sent out in small groups. They are teaching and administering Catholic schools in California, Texas, Arizona, South Carolina, and Michigan. A new mission will open next year in Columbus, Ohio, Sister Thomas Augustine said. Fifteen sisters are obtaining their teaching credentials this year and will go out to teach next year.

“We deliver a Catholic education because we are in the business of saving souls,” she said.

The order is part of a worldwide resurgence among religious orders who embrace the traditional religious life as part of Pope John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization, Sister Thomas Augustine said.

“The thing to note is what we all have in common: the habit, living a common life, devotion to the Eucharist and Our Lady, absolute fidelity to the Church’s teachings and the influence of John Paul II,” said Sister Augustine, who was a New York lawyer before she joined.

Find more information at http://www.sistersofmary.org/ or contact Sister Thomas Augustine at
maocadirector@sistersofmary.org.

Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist

H/t to Fr. Schnippel

New Generation of Sisters

From Naples News
By LIAM DILLON

Sisters Mary Grace and Maria Frassati have heard the jokes and noticed the stares, and they understand where it comes from.

The habit. The black and white robes. The everpresent rosary. The cross. Nuns are walking anachronisms, committed to an ideal in a way that very few other Americans can fathom, much less muster themselves.

Which is OK with Grace, who adds that she knows she dresses like “someone medieval.” Then she laughs.

Before Frassati (pronounced FRA-sati) entered the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, she had much the same thoughts about cloistered life.

“You kind of have this cooked up idea of somewhere between ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Sister Act’ is what religious life is going to be like,” Frassati says.

Grace is 34 and Frassati 25, so they use the deadpan wit and pop culture references like other 20- or 30-somethings. They play basketball and have funny knickknacks. Frassati has a homemade box with a drawing of a nun that reads, “Sista, please!”

Still, in fundamental ways to go beyond their clothing and rosary beads, these women are different from their peers.

It’s in the way they talk. Exclamations, even on the basketball court, don’t run stronger than “Goodness!” The nuns giggle when it’s revealed that one of the card games they play at night is called “Oh, Hell.”

It’s in the way they entertain. To greet a reporter and photographer in their Ave Maria home, Frassati and Grace, along with two other Dominican Sisters living on mission in Ave Maria, create a still life of refreshments: Eight brownies on a clear glass plate sit next to a pitcher of water and four empty glasses.

It’s in the way they describe their way of life. Becoming a nun is like nothing so crass as starting a “career,” even one that combines teaching, charity work and prayer. Instead, it’s a vocation, a calling. This calling has led them to turn over decisions about what many consider life’s basics — how to live, work, play and generally spend their time — to someone else.

But it was less a life they chose, the four nuns said, than one chosen for them by God.

“It wasn’t like a voice from the sky,” Frassati says. “But it was like an intense conviction of what I was made for.”

---

Mother Mary Assumpta Long, a founder and superior of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, described succinctly how her nuns behave. “We’re in the world,” she said. “But not of the world.”

In practice, though, the difference between those two ideas is a subtle one.

A typical day during the school year begins at 5 a.m. Prayer and breakfast fill the morning until they leave their home at 7:10 for the mile-long trip to Ave Maria’s K-12 private school. The school day starts at 8 with Mass and ends at 3:20 in the afternoon.

During their teaching stint last year the nuns taught mainly the younger students a variety of subjects. They were home by 4:15 p.m. to prepare for evening prayer at 5 p.m. They played cards for an hour at 6:15 p.m. and then prayed some more. In the hours before lights out at 10 p.m., the sisters prepared for their next day.

They say they like the strictly structured life. And they’re well aware of what they’ve given up: marriage, children of their own, parts of their individuality. (The nuns declined to give their birth names for this story because they didn’t want students to know them by anything other than the names chosen by Assumpta.)

They prefer to speak mostly about what they’ve gained: a purpose, a community, a sense of what it means to be a woman.

Modern feminism, Frassati says, “is really anti-feminine.” She prefers former Pope John Paul II’s idea of the “feminine genius,” which focuses on maternal and nurturing qualities of a woman’s potential.

“I think it’s a beautiful thing,” Frassati says, “to embrace the way God made you feminine with all the feminine gifts you have.”

It’s ideas like these as well as dusty notions like sacrifice and duty that give life as a nun an authenticity, excitement and a counter-cultural appeal, the nuns say.

The youth of today, Grace says, have a “call to be great. We want to be challenged.”

Not by striving for prototypical ideas of success and power. Instead, it’s to radically live what they believe, and do it joyfully.

“We’re not exactly like everybody else and we wouldn’t want to be,” Frassati says. “It’s not that we’re not different, it’s just that we’re not the kind of different people think we are.”

---

Grace was raised in a Catholic family in suburban Chicago, but growing up, she had no idea she would become a nun until her father died unexpectedly when she was 16. At his wake, she looked at his body and suddenly realized human life was fleeting.

“God gave me these new glasses,” she says.

And so she began to direct her gaze toward the spiritual life. It helped her maintain a connection with her father, the same way she now believes she can connect with anyone spiritually through prayer. Her discernment process — what they call their determination of whether to become a nun — was slow. Grace started attending Eucharistic adoration, a practice of intense prayer before the consecrated host Catholics believe to be Christ’s body and blood. At college she studied to be a nurse, but found that unsatisfying. She transferred to Franciscan University of Steubenville, a charismatic Catholic school in Ohio, to major in theology. Her undergraduate thesis was on redemptive suffering.

She became a teacher, but that wasn’t right either. She craved helping people physically and spiritually. Soon after, Grace met Assumpta on Steubenville’s campus and she was hooked. She entered the order six years ago.

Grace speaks with a Midwestern accent that has a slight Valley girl lilt. Her manner inside and outside her Ave Maria classroom is earnest, but grounded. Her classroom had a wall with her students’ names and a sliding scale titled, “Virtue.” If students practiced virtues, they would go up the scale and receive a reward. She sat with her students on a rug and asked who would be willing to make a sacrifice. Any kind of sacrifice would do.

“Jesus would be, like, thrilled,” she says.

Her mother, Nancy Kamp, 68, who still lives outside Chicago, calls her daughter’s vocation “beautiful.” But they don’t get to talk as much as she would like. So Kamp handwrites a letter to her daughter every week to tell her what’s new. Grace writes back when she can.

“I love writing those letters because it makes me feel close to her and makes her feel part of the family,” Kamp says.

Grace has made sacrifices to pursue this life of faith. She reminds herself that sacrifice is a gift of yourself.

“Imagine someone you love in Alaska,” she says. “And you’re wearing this fur coat and you’re warm and they’re freezing. But because you love them so much, you give up your fur coat for them even if it meant you would be cold. So you’ve made that sacrifice for someone else based on love. But, in a way, you’re happy, too, because you love them so much they’re warm now.”

That’s the link, she says, between giving of yourself and sacrifice.

---

There are about 59,000 nuns in the United States, according to data from a Catholic research institute. That’s less than a third of the peak in the 1960s. The median age is in the mid-70s.

The average age of the 75 sisters that make up the Dominican Sisters of Mary is 26, according to Sister Joseph Andrew, the order’s vocation’s director. And the average age of a woman entering the religious order is 21.

So how to they do it? With all the pressure to achieve, to find a great career, to be the most beautiful, to have the perfect marriage and the perfect children, how have the Dominican Sisters of Mary have been able to attract young women?

“That’s a question I get a thousand times a day,” Andrew says.

She counts off a list of reasons, mostly revolving around the order’s clear devotion to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

It’s God’s “coolest order,” joked Sister Thomas Aquinas, 25, another of the Dominicans at Ave Maria.

“The conventional wisdom is that the more traditional or conservative orders seem to be getting younger members,” said Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Washington, D.C. The center, which is affiliated with Georgetown University, plans to release a statistical study on the matter soon.

These more orthodox religious orders are tapping into the same network of homeschooled and retreat-going conservative young Catholics that Ave Maria University attracts, says Sister Patricia Wittberg, a sociology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Wittberg, who studies religious communities, says these groups have a strong sense of mission.

“To be perfectly blunt,” Wittberg says, “the more liberal groups don’t know who they are.”

Read the rest of the article HERE.

"Nuns from Ann Arbor Township convent head to New York to attend papal events"

Something tells me that the sisters in my previous post, the ones who were unfazed by the precipitous decline in the number of vocations to their communities, will not be traveling with much joy and enthusiasm to see Pope Benedict XVI.

From THE ANN ARBOR NEWS

By ELIYAHU GURFINKEL

Nuns at the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist convent in Ann Arbor Township pick up snacks for their bus tripvFriday to see the Pope in New York City.

For days, the sisters in the convent off Warren Road had watched the television news for word of Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the United States.

Before sunrise this morning, all 56 of the sisters living at the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor Township planned to board a chartered bus to travel to New York City, where they will attend two of the big papal events.

Other members of the convent on missions elsewhere in the country will join them.

"Each time we hear him and see him the excitement grows," said Sister Teresa Benedicta.

On Thursday evening, the sisters were busy packing lunches and snacks for the trip. Bags of popcorn and boxes of games stood ready to go by the door.

"They won't even sleep tonight," said Sister Mary Samuel.

They'll stay with a parish in New York City, sleeping in a school, retreat center and a parishioner's home. They'll return home to Michigan on Sunday.

This is Benedict's first trip to the United States, where he'll spend six days in Washington D.C. and New York. In New York, the sisters will attend a massive youth rally with Benedict, and then the Mass in Yankee Stadium with the pontiff. The sisters said Benedict is bringing a message of hope.

"He's very gentle," said Sister Maria Guadalupe. "He has a reputation of being very harsh and extreme, but he just comes across as very fatherly."

How Things Have Changed

Recently I had to read a book for our Permanent Diaconate formation that spoke to the idea of how "liberated" the Church had become post Vatican II, particularly in that Sisters had been freed from their enslavement as teachers in Catholic schools (not an exact quote, but that gets to the point of the author's message). How much better it is today that Priests, Sisters and laity are equals in "ministry" was the point of the text. Which gave me pause. Without the great number of vocations to religious teaching orders, what has happened to Catholic education? Here in the Diocese of Raleigh, where our Catholic schools are overwhelmingly staffed by lay teachers, the cost of tuition is out of reach for most. Elementary school tuition is around $4000 and the Diocesan High School is about $10,000 a year.

Long gone are the days when the likes of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Katherine Drexel founded schools to educate the children of immigrants, minorities, and the poor. Where has Catholic education ended up post Vatican II? The Diocese of Raleigh once had an exemplary history of Catholic schools founded by women's religious communities. St. Katherine Drexel supported schools in our Diocese and even visited them. Rural communities had schools where poor children received fine educations. Today many of those schools are closed, and a Catholic education is, for the most part, reserved to the wealthy. This is not to speak poorly of those who are blessed to send their children to these schools, or the schools themselves - they have to make ends meet and pay their teachers a competive wage with benefits. It is to comment on how things have changed - for the worse, due to the vocations "crisis" in many of our country's great religious teaching orders.

Thankfully there is good news. Some of the "teaching orders" that are very faithful to the Magisterium of the Church and continue to wear habits, among them the Nashville Dominicans and the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist, are seeing an increase in the number of vocations to their communities. In turn they are sending out Sisters to more and more schools - DEO GRATIAS!

Great video from the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist: "Our Mission is to Teach"


‘Growing Up Catholic’ in mid-20th century: Nuns in habits provided great formation

By Kevin Cullen
3/7/2008
The Catholic Moment

LAFAYETTE, Ind. (The Catholic Moment) - Millions of middle-aged and older Catholics remember Sister Mary Margaret, their third-grade teacher. She told gory stories about the martyrs, lived and breathed The Baltimore Catechism, and made you hold your nose to the blackboard if you didn’t do your homework.

Fuel for some funny stories, yes. But noted Catholic scholar Robert Orsi says that Sister provided fervent religious formation and helped transform Catholics into one of the most educated, most successful segments of American society.

Teaching nuns in 1960 were “the most educated sisters in all Catholic history,” he said in a lecture at Purdue University Feb. 8. “They had been going to summer schools since the 1920s … The idea that these were ignorant women who knew nothing about the world was simply not the case.”

Orsi, who earned a doctorate from Yale, holds the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. His talk, titled “Growing Up Catholic: A Case Study of Catholic Children in Mid-20th Century America,” drew a crowd of approximately 150. It was based on the research he did for a book on the social and cultural history of 20th-century Catholic childhoods, which will be published by Harvard University Press.

The lecture was sponsored by the Aquinas Education Foundation and the Religious Studies Program at Purdue.

Well prepared for the world

“My dad is Irish-Catholic, so it’s interesting to hear how he grew up,” said Michael O’Neill, a Purdue economics major from Indianapolis. “I grew up in Catholic schools, too. Our sisters said they would pray for us students.”

Orsi previously taught at Fordham, Indiana University and the Harvard Divinity School. He is past-president of the American Academy of Religion. The author of several books, he is an expert on Catholicism in the United States.

His research focused on Catholic children between 1925 and 1975. During that 50-year period, Catholics caught up with Protestants and Jews educationally, and by the 1970s they were more educated, and earning more, than either group, he said.

“These children were prepared for the world and did very well in it,” he said.

Catholic children, especially those taught in Catholic schools, tended to be disciplined and extremely well-versed in their faith, Orsi said. To them, supernatural things were real. Guardian angels were real. Souls in purgatory were really released. The saints depicted on religious cards shed real blood.

“Before World War II, if the crayon makers made colors just for Catholic children, they would come mostly in shades of red,” said Orsi, whose study involved interviewing adults across the country about their Catholic childhoods.

Solemn rites, deep theology

In addition to teaching academic subjects, school sisters wanted to ensure that the souls of their students were saved, he said. They made them memorize their catechisms. They stressed the sacraments, and expected them to understand complex theological concepts at an early age.

Because Catholic high schools were relatively rare, “the nuns and priests knew they had children until eighth grade,” Orsi said.

Catholic rites were solemn, and that intensified the imaginations of children. There was no such thing as a “children’s Mass.”

Some interview subjects admitted that they didn’t understand transubstantiation, and were terrified when they entered a confessional for the first time. They worried about the souls of unbaptized children in limbo, and cried when an adult told them that a beloved neighbor, who was not Catholic, could not enter heaven.

In many cases, the Church presented by adults “eluded their grasp,” he said. They were presented with “secrets and knowledge they were not ready for,” but that still prepared them for their adult roles.

Some kids tried to invent ingenious ways to “get around” Church prohibitions, especially those concerning fasting. All sorts of rumors and superstitions arose about Catholic sisters.

Still, Catholic children learned that evil was real and that the forces of grace offered protection and care, Orsi said. They saw themselves as embodied beings, and they often accepted heroic challenges. They knew that much was asked of them, both on earth and in heaven.

A priceless gift

Today, those long-ago children are adults. Often, they like to emphasize the distance they have traveled, intellectually and spiritually, since they memorized the questions and answers of their little catechisms.

Still, they received a priceless gift. Thanks to adults who taught them their faith, Orsi said, “the world made sense.”

The Catholic Church today is “very healthy,” he said, but few Catholic children are molded as they were when Sister Mary Margaret taught school.

“It was a very powerful formation,” Orsi said. “I can’t imagine it today … it was a striking way of engaging children’s minds and hearts.”

Religious communities notice more young women open to religious life

Rachel and Stephanie who both entered the Sisters of Life this fall. Rachel's older sister is already in the Sisters of Life, and Stephanie is quoted in the article below. Picture was taken just before the Sisters of Life had professions of vows.

By Andrea Slivka
Catholic News ServiceWASHINGTON (CNS)

Girls often dream of saying "I do" at the altar to their future spouse.Katrina Gredona hopes she'll be saying those words to Jesus as a religious sister."When I look at a community of religious women, I see women who contribute fruitfully to the church and to the world in a very special way and in a very essential way, and I think that's exciting," said Gredona, a student at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Ten years ago, Gredona's interest in religious life would have been unique in comparison with the majority of other Catholic girls, as reports indicated a decline in the number of religious sisters in the United States. But recently campus ministers and the vocations directors of some women's religious communities have been noticing a new trend of more young women looking into religious life.

Many vocation directors, in interviews with Catholic News Service and in responses to a survey by Vision Vocation Guide, reported a notable increase in the number of women contacting them for information. A small number of communities reported a stable increase in young entrants.At the same time, more campus ministries are helping young women learn about discernment and religious life.

The cloistered Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary in Summit, N.J., is one community with a significant increase in interest in the order. Founded in 1919, the community has had 15 aspirants spend time with the sisters in the past three years to discern whether to enter the community.That number is much higher than in previous years, when the community would be lucky to have one aspirant each year, said Sister Mary Catharine of Jesus, novice mistress."

The Lord is giving these young women the grace to respond to him and he is so powerful and irresistible that they want to say yes to him," she said. "Given our culture, the fact that so many women are feeling that God is calling them to this life and that they want to respond is nothing short of a miracle."Of the 15 aspirants, more than half entered the Dominican or other communities and two continue to discern whether they are called to the Dominican community.

Sister Mary Scholastica Lee, vocations director for the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, said the change is more than just an increase in numbers -- she has noticed more commitment by young women to follow through on their initial interest in her community."

This year, the desire for religious life seems more deeply rooted," she said.In a recent survey sent to 165 communities' vocations directors, 71 percent said more people inquired about their community recently. Nineteen percent said they have had more candidates preparing to enter in the past three years than in previous years. However, 41 percent said they currently have no women in formation.

The survey was conducted by Vision Vocation Guide, a magazine for those discerning vocations to the religious life and priesthood, and 80 percent of respondents were for women's communities.

Secular news organizations have recently highlighted rapidly growing communities, such as the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecelia in Nashville, Tenn., and the Sisters of Life in New York, that have up to 15 young women entering each year.

But other communities recently have had a steady inflow of three to seven young postulants, according to Michael Wick, executive director for the Institute on Religious Life in Libertyville, Ill.

Those communities include the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich., founded in 1970; the Sisters St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in Illinois, founded in 1869; the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, based in St. Louis and founded in 1891; and the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Missouri, founded in 1874.

Sister Mary Gabriel, vocations director for the Sisters of Life, said the girls she talks with want more than what the society and culture have to offer and are drawn to the freedom they find in religious life through living the vocation to which they are called.

"It's not a kickback to the '50s. It's so different. Young women have seen it all," she said.In answer to questions sent to them by CNS, young women shared the reasons they're open to and discerning religious life."

I think it's my responsibility as a faithful young person to seriously discern whether or not God is calling me into direct service of the church through religious life," said Lindsay Wilcox, a student at Boston College.

"I am considering religious life because God has placed that inclination on my heart -- to totally give my life back to him, who laid down his life for me," said Stephanie Ray, who is preparing to enter the Sisters of Life. (OK this is pretty cool, my former student, dear friend, and Godmother to our son is quoted in this article!)

The late Pope John Paul II plays a large role in the new trend, according to several vocation directors and campus ministers interviewed by CNS.

At World Youth Days, the pope challenged young people to live their Catholic faith in a radical way and to not be afraid to seek out God's will for their lives, said Sister Mary Emily Knapp, vocations director for the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville. Many of the sisters have told her they first started thinking about vocations at a World Youth Day.

The congregation has 228 sisters, the highest number in its history. In early August, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, cited the community as an example of the vitality of the Catholic Church in the United States. The cardinal was in Nashville to attend the Knights of Columbus annual national convention.

Another reason for the increase in the interest in religious life, according to vocation directors and young sisters, is more campus ministries nurturing and promoting vocations.Sister Mary Gabriel said not long ago it was a "rarity and oddity" to be a college student discerning a vocation. But now she sees girls coming from campus ministries, particularly at public schools, that have eucharistic adoration, Scripture study and daily Mass.

"If you put these together, it's a recipe for falling in love with the Lord," she said.At the University of Illinois, campus minister Sister Sarah Roy, a young Sister of St. Francis of the Immaculate Conception, said religious vocations weren't talked about much when she attended the university. Now the campus ministry makes the option more visible, and she sees how the students themselves are more willing to consider it.

Likewise, a discernment group at Boston University provides young women with the opportunity to discuss religious life, visit nearby communities and participate in retreats at the end of each semester.Sister Olga Yaqob, an Iraqi who is a member of the Missionaries of the Virgin Mary who leads the group, said the overall purpose is to help the girls become familiar with the will of God and prepare them to respond with a "yes" to whichever vocation they are called by God.

Other contributing factors to the increase, according to those interviewed, include:

-- Web sites making information on discernment and religious communities easily accessible.

-- Dioceses working with religious communities to promote vocations.

-- More general interest in spirituality among a growing number of young adults.

It's uncertain still whether the current increase in interest will lead to a significant increase in the number of those entering, according to Holy Cross Brother Paul Bednarczyk, executive director of the National Religious Vocation Conference, an organization in Chicago serving vocation directors.

"It's still too soon to say; however, this is very good news," he said.

Fantastic *VIDEO* on Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist

Many of you are aware of the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist. For those of you who don't - they are a ten year old community of Dominicans, a community of teachers, that is exploding with young vocations. This is a documentary video from the CBC.

I particularly like the segway question asked by the anchorman (paraphrase to follow) "Why would young, intelligent women who could do anything with their lives choose to live a life of poverty and celibacy?" This video does a good job of letting the sisters answer that question.

EVERYONE should watch this VIDEO!

Interested? Visit their website here.

The modern US nun is an ex-soldier, lawyer and has a blog

by Jocelyne Zablit

NEW YORK (AFP) - One was a successful corporate lawyer, another a Mercedes-driving businesswoman and a third a navy officer who steered battleships and hunted down cocaine smugglers in South America.
They are among a growing number of women in their 20s and 30s across the United States who have shed high-powered jobs, career ambitions and boyfriends for a nun's veil and a life devoted to the church.
Though the trend is by no means spreading like wildfire, several Roman Catholic communities throughout the country say they have noticed a surprising and welcome phenomenon in the last decade as younger women join their ranks.
"The inquiries in recent years have been coming from younger and younger women, most of them in their early to mid-20s," Sister Agnes Mary, mother superior at the Sisters of Life community in New York, told AFP.
The Catholic community, which counted seven members when it was founded in 1991, has grown to 52 women who live in six convents scattered throughout the New York area. A seventh convent is planned within the next two years.
"I think young women are searching for something and culture is not giving it to them so they are turning to God," said Sister Mary Karen, 33, the superior at the Sisters of Life Formation House in the Bronx, where 18 women are being groomed for a life of obedience, poverty and chastity.
They include a Yale graduate, a former navy officer, a former medical student, an opera singer and a Web designer.
All have college degrees, are well-travelled and were more cosmopolitan than cloistered growing up.
They have abandoned cell phones, I-Pods, daily Starbucks runs and, in some cases, fiances for dorm-like rooms, or "cells" as they call them, and a wardrobe that consists of a veil and habit.
"I was in the navy for a total of 10 years because I wanted to do something great with my life but I realized I could never be passionate about it," said Angela Karalekas, 28, who entered the convent in September and will receive her habit and new religious name in June. "I was raised Catholic but my decision has been hard on my father and three brothers."
Once the women take their final vows, a process that takes about eight years from the time they enter the convent, they are required to give up all their worldly possessions and rely on donations for their needs.
They rise at 5:00 am -- 5:30 or 6:00 on weekends -- and spend the major part of the morning praying or in contemplative silence. Those who have taken their final vows work within the community, helping the homeless, pregnant women or anyone in need.
"It was basically apply to medical school or apply to a convent and the convent won out," said Bridget Heisler, 24. "I knew there was a love in my life and it was the Lord."
The nuns relax every afternoon by going -- veil and all -- on bike rides, playing basketball or rollerblade hockey, a sight that has some passersby frantically whipping out their cell phones to take pictures or shouting "Go Sister".
According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), there are currently 66,608 Catholic nuns in the United States compared to nearly 180,000 in 1965. Worldwide, there are an estimated 776,260 nuns as opposed to some one million in 1970.
But despite the dwindling overall number, several new orders and communities, especially those founded during the 1978-2005 pontificate of John Paul II, say they have seen a surge of new blood in the last decade, a welcome turnabout for the church .
"These women are looking for something deeper," said Brother Paul Bednarczyk, executive director of the National Religious Vocation Conference. "They are looking to develop their Catholic identity and given our secular values in the United States where we promote sex, money and power, it is a very counter cultural thing to profess celibacy, poverty and obedience."
Bednarczyk and others also credit the late John Paul II's charisma and his effort to reach out to younger Catholics for the mounting popularity of some communities.
"The John Paul II generation is a generation of young people, a generation of authenticity," said Sister Joseph Andrew Bogdanowicz, vocation director at the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, located in the midwestern state of Michigan.
"They have seen the emptiness of many worldly values and many want something more," added Bogdanowicz, 54, who founded her community in 1997 along with three other women.
The convent today counts 71 women whose average age is 24. Next summer 20 more postulants are set to join the order which is rushing to raise funds for a new building to house the inflow.
"God in his goodness is sending us so many young vocations that we can't build fast enough to keep up with the number of young women entering our community," Bogdanowicz said.
But apart from divine intervention, those interviewed also credit the Internet with breathing new life into the nunnery. Most orders today have Web sites and about 20 nuns run their own blogs.
"The (Church) today needs to be on the Internet because that's where young people are going to go," Bednarczyk said.
He said women interested in religious life can even turn to a "match-making" Web site for guidance on which community is best suited for them.
"We took the concept of finding your love match, like when you're looking for a husband (...), and applied it to religious life," Bednarzcyk said. "We've gotten over 2,000 hits in two months."
Julie Vieira, 35, who began a blog entitled "A Nun's Life" last July to chronicle her experience as a sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, said she gets about 600 hits a day and at least a half dozen e-mails from people inquiring about religious life.
"One of the reasons I started the blog was to explain what it's like to be a nun and to address the stereotypes out there," Vieira, who works at Loyola Press, a Catholic publisher in Chicago, told AFP. "I just wanted to tell people 'Hey I'm an ordinary person'."

Next Generation of Religious Sisters...

Time magizine has a decent article on today's religious sisters. It is worth the read, particularly if you are a young woman discerning a vocation to religious life.

Hat tip: American Papist