It all started with a litany. “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” The clock turned the minute hand with a metallic tremor. “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” A rooster crowed in the courtyard corral, oblivious to what was happening inside. “Glory to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,” seven women's voices repeated in chorus. “As it was in the beginning, is now and forever, forever and ever,” seven others answered. Someone began to recite the mystery of Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River. The clock chimed 1:15 p.m. Nobody paid attention to him. Then they played the wedding of Cana and the rest of the mysteries established for that day. It was Thursday, and on Thursdays the luminous mysteries are recited. Whatever month it is. Whatever year it is. Whether it's hot or cold.
Portrait of the cloistered nuns of the Convent of the Poor Clares in Carmona. the abbess (third from the right), Verónicah Nzula, along with the rest of the nuns of the convent. Laura León
On the wall, covered with Andalusian tiles, hung portraits of the Virgin and Jesus Christ. Also several crucifixes. A group photograph of the current nuns. A border with eight photographs of the previous nuns. Above the door: a large portrait of Pope Francis. Between two windows, a sheet with the title “Community Schedule” defined the day. At 6.30, time to get up. After: office of reading and lauds. Third. Breakfast. At 9:00, mass. After: work, study, rosary, and sexta, lunch, nap, none and reading, song rehearsal, personal study, vespers and prayer, dinner, recess. At 10:00 p.m., complete them and go to sleep. The day was over. “We don't do big things. Religious life is small things done with love,” Sister Victoria justifies.
The little things: cooking to feed 14 sisters, cleaning the convent every day, feeding the chickens in the yard, watering the plants, running the washing machine, taking care of the church, taking care of the inn, taking care of the museum, bake sweets and sell them, go to the food bank, darn and embroider and sew and knit, pray, pray again, pray several times a day, talk to God, earn your daily bread. Small things do not include leaving the convent for a walk, nor going on a trip, nor going to the cinema or a shopping center or eating at a restaurant.
A cloistered monastery works just like a prison. There is discipline, there is work, there are bars, no one from the outside can see what is happening inside, no one from the inside can leave whenever they want. The difference is that you enter a cloistered monastery on your own and you stay on your own. Fourteen of the 14 nuns of the cloistered monastery of Santa Clara de Carmona (Seville) responded that they felt free despite living enclosed within the walls of the monastery. Mother Abbess Sister Veronicah, 48, born in Kenya, added: “Freedom is the ability to decide for yourself what you like and what you want to be in life.”
—Do you feel free?
-Yeah. The problem is that freedom is now confused with debauchery.
The sisters have fun in the yard during their day of recreation.Laura León
Their names are Consolata, Rosa María, Victoria, Isabel, Cecilia, María Cecilia, Margarita, Angelines, Cristina, Felisa, Virginia, Jackelin, Francisca and Verónicah. They are all between 35 and 48 years old and all were born in Kenya. Except Francisca, who was born in a town in Castilla-La Mancha and is 84 years old. She is the oldest of all, and also the last to enter the convent.
Founded in 1212 by Saint Clare and Saint Francis of Assisi, the Poor Clares are the only female order that is governed by its own rule, the one written by its founder. All nuns who join the order take three vows: poverty, obedience and chastity. It occurred to a pope, Urban IV, to add a fourth: radical closure. But the Poor Clares of Carmona, who live in constitutional and not papal cloister, decided together that theirs would not be a superb cloister. For your own survival.
The convent does not receive payments from the diocese or any religious institution. The nuns come without a dowry and do not have income or assets. “We took the vow of poverty. We have nothing of our own, everything is common. We let go of things to live for the Lord,” explains the abbess. Sister Francisca adds: “Poverty produces liberation, and when you are not tied to anything you can serve God better. Nowadays it happens that everyone wants to have everything.” It was Saint Clare who established the vow of poverty and detached herself from all her possessions. She had been born rich, an Italian lady from a good family, and she decided that the Poor Clares would only obtain their income from work, donations and begging.
As donations have not stopped falling in recent decades, the current Poor Clares have the obligation to support themselves with their own work. They are self-employed and contribute to Social Security as pastry chefs for the sweets they make. They try to keep up with that, but, just like what happens outside the convent walls, the bills at the end of the month don't come up. They pay 2,000 euros per month for electricity alone. And so, the stones of the convent give way to the passage of time. The one in Carmona, founded in 1460, enjoyed papal and Crown protection and was in charge of keeping the keys to the city in times of war. Now, most of the buildings in the area are closed and unused due to landslides, humidity and ruin. There is no money for repairs, and without repairs there will be no convent, and without a convent there will be no nuns. “A bishop told me that we had to maintain greater seclusion, that we didn't have to go out at all, and I told him: 'Look, if you give me 3,000 euros every month not to go out, I won't go out. "I only go out to go to the food bank and collect donations," says Sister Verónicah. “I have to work to earn bread,” she says, and then adds: “It was Saint Paul who said: 'Whoever does not want to work, let him not eat.'”
In the dining room, Sister Rosa María is serving lentils.
Two cloistered nuns wash their clothes in the convent of the Clarisas Pobres sisters of Carmona, on January 31, 2023, the day established for laundry.Laura León
To go to the dining room you have to cross a patio of whitewashed arches, above which a vivid blue sky sits like a promise of freedom. The sisters go in single file. Someone sings a song. The dining room, a huge room decorated with religious frescoes that are deteriorating due to neglect, remains dark. Inside it is colder than outside, and with the food they serve jugs of warm water that steams in the glass. Today's menu consists of lentils with lentils as a starter, without vegetables and without sausages, and corn grits with liver in sauce as a main course. The legumes are from the food bank. The liver, a gift. The dessert fruit, a donation from Mercasevilla. “We make do with what we have, and thank God. Once a week, on Saturdays, the fishmonger gives us fish. The neighbors bring us meat for Christmas,” says Sister Verónicah.
Today Sister Rosa María cooked. The shift rotates day by day. The next day, it is Sister Victoria's turn to cook.
—What are you going to cook tomorrow?
—Well, I will enter the pantry and see what providence has ordained, and then what God wants.
God wanted us to eat chickpeas the next day.
Sister Consolata during one of the prayers in the convent chapel.Laura León
The path to becoming a cloistered nun is not short. The first step is to receive the call. That is, to feel that you have the vocation to dedicate your life to serving God, the sisters and the convent. Of course, to do this you must first have received the “gift of faith”, which is about to become an animal in danger of extinction in 21st century societies. Then, if you have received the call in Kenya, where there are no convents, you have to come across a nun who is in a Spanish convent, the land with the most cloistered convents in the world. That nun informs you about the life you are going to lead and she brings you to Spain. Then begins a trial period that can last about seven years and serves to distinguish the true vocation from the simulated one. When Sister Veronicah arrived at the convent, all the nuns were of Spanish origin, although very old. Now they are buried in the convent cemetery and she has promoted a vocational renewal. While we talk in her Abbess's office, her phone rings about five times in just one hour. In one of those calls, her interlocutor, upon hearing her speak with an accent, states: “You are not from here.” She replies: “No, I'm from Kenya.”
—Does it bother you that they constantly tell you that you are a foreigner?
—No, I'm proud.
-Because?
—The Europeans went to Africa first. And now we Africans are the ones who come to evangelize.
The abbess, Veronicah Nzula, during one of her spiritual exercises at the convent of the Poor Clare Sisters of Carmona, after the afternoon mass.Laura León
In Spain, where there are 712 cloistered monasteries, one in five nuns is foreign, a process that already began in the 1980s. Pope Francis himself prohibited in 2016 “recruiting nuns from outside.” In the Carmona convent, 13 of the 14 nuns are from outside. “In Spain the vocation is being lost. The Church is outdated and does not attract young people. Some novices come here to ask questions, but none of them stay. This life is very hard,” declares Sister Verónicah. A convent is not a hotel. The rooms are cells of no more than five square meters with a bed, a small table and a chair. The food is scarce. Work hours take up the entire day. They call the family once every three months. They travel to Kenya only once every four years. And yet, the abbess assures that the reward is great.
—You suffer a lot until you get used to it.
—Is it worth suffering?
—What is worth, costs.
—What have you gained after so much suffering?
-Peace.
—Do you think people outside understand you?
-No.
-Because?
—Because they don't understand how 14 women can live together, locked up, and be happy.
Sister Cecilia Mbatha Mutiso during prayer in the convent chapel after the afternoon mass.Laura León
Sometimes the call comes early. It came to Sister Consolata when she was 6 years old, when she met a nun in a Kenyan church. The nun told her: “You can be a good nun.” Consolata answered: “Take me to the convent with you.” She was enthralled by that woman. Her parents tried to dissuade her. Her father, who was a businessman with a fleet of buses in Nairobi, took her to the Kenyan capital on weekends to get the idea out of her head. She wanted her to study, for her to go to university. One day she had a traffic accident and she died. Consolata went to university. “I had to fulfill her wish.”
She studied to be a secretary, graduated in Computer Science and began studying Engineering. She even met someone she calls a close friend. “I told her that she wanted to be a nun and that ours could only be temporary. He told me about getting married and I told him that we could create a religious community to pray. Now I am a nun and he is a priest in the Congo.”
Sister Consolata finally married God. And it's not a metaphor. A few years ago, like the rest of the nuns of the Poor Clares convent of Carmona, she lived the rite of solemn profession: the definitive step in which you commit yourself for all eternity to serve Jesus Christ. In this rite your wedding with Jesus is celebrated, to whom you promise fidelity and obedience even beyond your own death. Sister Angelines remembers perfectly that it was “the most important day” of her life. “I said yes, without looking back, to my husband: Jesus Christ.”
—And he is a good husband?
He laughs for a long time before answering.
-The best.
Sister Mar'a Wavinya Nyingi during prayer.Laura León
Sister Felisa says: “We doubt, we are human,” when I ask about those moments when faith falters. The first years of life in the convent are the hardest. “It's like when you're dating and you think everything is perfect and then you get married and problems come,” Sister Verónica explains. Faith and romantic love are not so different.
For Sister Isabel, the torment of doubt lasted for years. She felt the calling to be a nun early but late enough to have built a life for herself. She was a tailor. She worked in a store run by a Muslim and wore stylish clothes that she sewed herself. In the photos that she keeps in her room she appears smiling, dancing at weddings with friends and posing in parks. She had a profession. She had a salary. She abandoned everything for God. “They told me that to travel here she should take a suitcase with only three skirts, three blouses, a jacket and a pair of shoes. After a year they gave me a habit that I had to carry for two years. The same, without changing it. That was hard, although it was harder to spend the first two Christmases in the convent. The confinement was very difficult for me,” she recalls.
—Did you think about leaving?
-Yeah. I thought: if things don't work out here, I'll have the sewing machine, I'll rebuild my life, I'll get married and have two children. Those first years, if Kenya had been where Madrid, I would have left while they were praying.
—Do you regret not having left?
-No. Years later I saw the beauty of this life. I feel very free now. There is a beauty here that is not outside. Outside my friends tell me their problems. A friend is abused by her husband. To another, the children. I don't have those problems. More than one friend has told me that they wish they had made the same decision as me.
A nun feeds the convent's chickens. The chicken coop was a donation from a neighbor. Laura Leon
It is already afternoon and Francisca observes a couple of storks on the bell tower. “What is the name of the sound that the stork makes with its beak?” she asks. She refers to crotorar. The tired light of siesta time, which in the convent they call the holy hour, bites the wooden bench on which her aching body rests. In front of her stands her walker.
Sister Francisca felt her first call when she came of age. She spent 20 years as a little sister to the homeless elderly. Until her mother got sick. “I left when I was 27, during which I lived outside a convent.” She worked in a juvenile center, and at 77 years old the Lord called her again. “God writes straight on crooked lines,” she says. She is now 84 and she married Jesus very recently.
—Have you had an earthly husband?
—Husband as husband, no.
-Boyfriend?
—Boyfriend as a boyfriend, no.
-Friend?
—Friend, yes. But with all the morals, nothing to attract attention.
-What does that mean?
—I have been completely normal, and within the normal range, because I have not rejected opportunities.
Sister Victoria Nthemba, from Kenya, has lunch in the refectory of the convent. Laura León
Then, after the afternoon prayer, Francisca and the rest of the sisters will go to mass in their church, which will also be attended by a couple of tourists and 11 novices of the Daughters of Merciful Love, dedicated to an active life and not to closure. They will sing and listen to the priest's mass. Then, in their chapel, they will pray for the sick and for believers and for atheists, and for the poor and for all of us sinners.
They will have dinner in the dining room, they will wash the dishes in a large austere kitchen and someone will sing again, someone will laugh. Their only recreational time of the day will be spent in the room they use to pray the rosary, and there they will talk about their day, their feelings or they will hand-knit the Franciscan rope that serves as their belt. They don't read newspapers. The only books that enter the convent are about the lives of the saints. Sometimes they watch TV. Some nights, they also play ludo. The prize: a candy for the one who wins. At ten at night, as if by an order neither seen nor heard, they will open the book of hours again and end the day with another prayer. A compact darkness is already falling outside. The rooster is asleep. The convent remains silent. Tomorrow will be another day. At 6.30, time to get up. After: reading and lauds. Third. Breakfast. At 9:00, mass. A day completely the same as today. A day dedicated to the small things.
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