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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World

Being a nun offers me the best of both worlds: prayer and service to the poor

Emma Beddington
Two Nuns Walking With Shopping Bags
‘I divide my time between soup kitchens, homeless shelters, emergency food and housing programmes, and providing medical support to people living on the streets.’ Photograph: Sam Mellish/In Pictures/Getty Images

Thank you to Emma Beddington for her thoughtful column (Tired of being a woman in 2025? Why not become a nun?, 1 December). It is always refreshing to see nuns and religious sisters portrayed in a context other than the horror-movie stereotype we seem to have inherited.

I was intrigued by her mention of Convent Wisdom: How Sixteenth-Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First-Century Life by Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita. I look forward to reading it and I may well recommend it in our Franciscan newsletter.

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