"In Nairobi, cloistered Carmelites give themselves to God in prayer"

By Barb Fraze
Catholic News Service

Photo: Sister Bernadette is among 16 sisters in a contemplative community at Mount Carmel Convent in Nairobi. (CNS/Nancy Wiechec)

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) -- For several of the cloistered Carmelite Sisters at Mount Carmel Convent, their life of prayer began in their families, when they were children.

"My dad taught me to pray for others," said Sister Bernadette, one of the younger sisters. She said her father told her he knew sisters who prayed for everyone, and she asked if they could pray for her, too. She said she began corresponding with the sisters and was drawn to their life of prayer.

Sister Constanza, who professed her final vows in January, said she attended Mass each morning because she did not live far from the local church. Each evening, her family gathered to pray the rosary and other evening prayers.

"I decided to give myself to the Lord for myself and for the salvation of souls," and the best way seemed to be contemplative life, she said.

In an interview with Catholic News Service Feb. 16, several of the sisters talked about the path that led them to nearly continuous prayer each day.

"I never dreamed of becoming a nun," said Sister Monica, who now serves as novice mistress for the order. In college, she met some Catholic students who began praying the rosary together, then attending daily Mass. One of the students wanted to become a Franciscan priest, and as he talked more about the saints, her interest grew.

She said she was filled with "a desire to belong to Christ."

Sister Regina, a young nun who works with aspirants, said her family prayed the rosary and intercessions every day.

"I came from a praying family," she said with a smile. She said she felt called to pray, "especially for priests."

Not all of the sisters are from Kenya. Sister Agnes, from India, said a friend of her sister was becoming a Carmelite, and "somehow that mystique of Carmel drew me very strongly."

The cloister was founded by Carmelites from Dublin in the mid-20th century. When the archbishop of Nairobi visited Cleveland, he asked the Carmelites there for help, and seven nuns and three postulants flew to Kenya in 1951.

The three postulants -- Margaret, Jean and Annamae -- remain, now as some of the oldest members of the order.

Sister Margaret, originally from Pittsburgh, said when she was a teenager, she had visited the Carmelites in Cleveland, and they invited her to go with them to Kenya. They "took a chance" and took her along, she said. Since then, she has only traveled home to be with her mother when she died.

She and Sister Agnes spoke of how much the area around the cloister has changed. Today, it has been built up and surrounded by affluent homes. When they arrived, they were the only building on the hill, and they could see Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro in different directions. Now the city is too built up to see far, they said.

The two were there during the eight-year Mau Mau Uprising that started in 1952, and the Mau Mau, a tribal group, had a hideout in the valley. Sister Agnes said one of the local priests talked to the Mau Mau, who promised never to trouble the sisters, because they were holy.

Today, when young women apply to join the order, the sisters require that they finish high school and begin some other course work, Sister Monica said.

"It gives them time to mature a bit," she said.

Sister Regina, who works with the aspirants, said she checks to see if candidates are "determined to live the life."

"Does she feel called because she has other things she is afraid to face or does she feel called because God is calling her?" she said.

An aspirant will join the sisters for three months to see if a contemplative life is something she really wants. The day begins with the prayers of the morning office at 5:20 and ends around 10 or 10:30 p.m. Other than a couple of hours of recreation, the day is spent in prayer. While the sisters work -- sewing vestments and altar linens, printing greeting cards and making Communion hosts -- they meditate. Meals, cooked by the sisters, are eaten in silence while one nun reads -- to nourish the soul.

The sisters pray for their own intentions -- pregnant women and mothers, priests, events in the world -- as well as intentions of those who ask, including Muslims, Hindus and Protestants.

Sister Bernadette said they prayed for Americans before the 2008 elections "because we have our American sisters."

"It's not just like we are here for Kenya," added Sister Regina.

Pope Benedict XVI Says Contemplatives Give Breath to World

From ZENIT

ROME, MARCH 9, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Contemplative communities are called to be a type of "spiritual lung" for the world, so that spiritual "respiration" is not strangled by the bustle of cities, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope said this today when he visited the Oblate Sisters of Santa Francesca Romana. He stopped at the convent after having visited the headquarters of Rome's civil authorities, where he addressed the mayor and other civil leaders.

Today is the feast day of St. Francesca (1384-1440), whom the Holy Father referred to as "the most Roman of saints."

After spending some time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and in veneration of the saint's body, the Pope addressed the sisters and students that reside at the center.

Referring to his spiritual exercises last week with the members of the Curia, the Holy Father said "he had felt once again how indispensable silence and prayer are."

He noted how the convent is located at the heart of the city, saying, "How can we not see in it the symbol of the need to return the spiritual dimension to the center of civil coexistence, to give full meaning to the multiple activities of the human being?"

The Bishop of Rome told the nuns: "Your community, together with the other communities of contemplative life, is called to be a sort of 'spiritual lung' of society, so that the performance, the activism of a city, is not devoid of spiritual 'respiration,' the reference to God and his plan of salvation. [...]

"A singular balance is lived here between religious and secular life, between the life of the world and outside of the world. A model that was not born in a laboratory, but in the concrete experience of a young Roman woman: written -- it could be said -- by God himself in Francesca's extraordinary existence.

"It is no accident that the walls of this environment are decorated with images of her life, demonstrating that the real building that God wishes to construct is the life of the saints."

In this context, the Pope stressed that also today "Rome needs women who are all for God and for their neighbor; women able to recollect themselves and give generous and discreet service; women who are able to obey their pastors, but also able to support and motivate them with their suggestions."

This vocation "is the gift of a maternity that is made one with religious oblation, modeled after Mary," the Pontiff reflected. "Mary's heart is the cloister where the Word continues to speak in silence, and at the same time is the furnace of a charity that leads to courageous gestures, and also to a persevering and hidden generosity."

Not Roman Catholic, but certainly worth watching - a video on Orthodox Hermits

Hat tip to The Crescat via Fr. Blake

The Little Brothers of St. Francis, Boston

Visit the Little Brothers of St. Francis website HERE.

H/t to Don Gelinas

"In Italy, convents are emptying"

From St. Louis Today
By Christine Spolar
MCT
11/27/2008

BOLOGNA, Italy — This city of red brick towers and delicately painted porticoes once boasted the most convents of any city in Italy: Nearly 100 sanctuaries sprang up in the 16th century for women committed to teaching, caring for the ill and giving their lives to God.

These days, the nuns of Bologna are part of an uncomfortable countdown in Italy and the rest of the Roman Catholic world. Every week, it seems, there are fewer nuns, fewer convents with full houses and almost no Italians who care to make the commitment to a wholly religious life.

Schools and hospitals, in particular, have seen a loyal work force wane. Nuns from the order of Serve di Maria Addolorata di Chioggia left their convent in the Villa Erbosa private hospital in the last week of October. There were four sisters left of the dozens who used to cater to the physical and spiritual needs of the sick.

Across town at Ospedale Sant’Orsola, 40 nuns were among the caregivers. Now there are six, and they are mostly too old to work hard or long. Sister Superior Maria, 79, admits no one else is knocking at the door.

Schools in this renowned university town long ago gave up relying on Italian nuns as educators. The drop in nurses parallels work trends across Italy. The most fresh-faced nuns and novices taking up the hard chores in Bologna now hail from Africa and India.

The most populous convent — with 300 nuns — is home to mostly African and Indian women. It is a cultural leap in conservative Italy, where immigration itself is relatively new. As one nun explained: "Our culture is a European culture and theirs is completely different. ... Sometimes the Italians misunderstand them and sometimes they misunderstand the Italians. It’s not constant, but no doubt there are difficulties."

But the new novices also bear some things in common to their Italian elders. They do not come from wealth or have expectations that, as Sister Maria explained, can overshadow their religious prospects.

"The young in Italy have TV. They have cell phones. They have these laptops they carry around," the nun said quietly, her slight voice echoing across the wide hallway of the convent. "When you are going to discos, how can you expect to hear the word of God? You need silence to hear God."

The vanishing of Italian nuns reflects a decades-long trend within the Roman Catholic Church, as gender barriers in education and jobs fell in Western countries.

Changing demographics also played a role. Smaller families — Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe — meant fewer parents were seeking help from the church.

When families were larger, they were more likely to send a girl to a convent, said 80-year-old Sister Domenica Cremonini, who first walked into Visitandine dell’Immacolata when she was 11. Sister Domenica, a tiny, bright-eyed keeper of the faith, is also the keeper of records inside the vast monastery walls.

The oldest nun among the seven sisters of the Visitandine is 94, she said. The last novice who came under Sister Domenica’s watch is now 70. Still, this convent is doing well compared to its neighbors. Down the street, at Figlie del Sacro Cuore di Gesu, the number of nuns has slipped to two — one below the standard that designates a religious community.

Sister Enrica Martignoni, who directs novice schools in Bologna, said the number of nuns has dropped by more than a third in Italy since the 1990s. Recent years add little hope: In 2007 there were 856 nuns. In 2008 the figure fell to 808.

"When I joined, you’d have 25 novices in a class. Now you might have one," Sister Enrica said. "And yes, of course, we worry. There are a lot of people who pray over this."

Sister Domenica said she believes young religious women working in the community are an important spiritual component to well-being.

"We nuns add something. In the hospital, they tell me we are like good health — and when we are not around, you fall sick. I am not saying the doctors or nurses are not good, but nuns bring another kind of spirit."

The Vatican has reported in statistical surveys that the number of Catholics in religious orders around the world has declined. The latest worldwide data from 2006 found 993,171 active and cloistered nuns — a drop of 7,887 from 2005. The biggest drop was seen among active community-based nuns, with 753,400 in 2006, down from 760,529. Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate focused on the U.S. nun population since 1965, when there were 173,865 religious women. By 2000 the U.S. nun population had dropped to 80,000, records show.

Native-born Italians who come to convents now tend to be older, more educated and much more weary of the worldly life they have been leading. All the nuns interviewed said they see a spurt in the proportion of nuns seeking the cloistered life.

"There’s a lack of nuns," Sister Enrica said. "But if someone wants to become a nun, more and more, she wants to be in a cloister.

"Perhaps when you face so much superficiality in life, people want to pull away from it all," she said. "They feel a need for an interior life. Because society doesn’t offer that much anymore."

"Pope Thanks Contemplative Religious"

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 16, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is inviting the faithful to support religious communities of men and women who dedicate themselves exclusively to prayer.

The Pope launched his appeal after praying today's midday Angelus in St. Peter's Square. He noted that Nov. 21, the feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, is also the day "pro orantibus," that is, "for those who pray," in particular cloistered religious communities.

"Let us thank the Lord for the sisters and brothers who have embraced this mission, dedicating themselves completely to prayer and living off what Providence gives them," the Pontiff said. "Let us also pray for them and for new vocations and let us commit ourselves to supporting monasteries in their material needs."

The Pope then addressed himself to men and women contemplatives to tell them that their "presence in the Church and the world is indispensable."

"We are with you," he concluded, "and we bless you with great affection!"