Sound of silence

THEY live a hidden life of prayer, penance, and perpetual adoration behind closed doors, following a deeply religious way of life which has remained largely unchanged since the 13th century.

But as the Poor Clare Colettines, the enclosed order of contemplative nuns, marked the 800th anniversary of their foundation last night, the sisters living in the Cork monastery took their first tentative steps into the world of social media.

Known to most as the Poor Clares, they said it was a community decision to set up their own dedicated website, and to allow video cameras in to their College Rd monastery to record their Sunday rosary and benediction, clips which are available on YouTube.

“We’re dipping our toes in,” said the mother abbess, Sr Colette Marie.

“But it was a community decision. If a girl feels like she has a vocation, the first place she’s likely to look these days is the internet.”

Sr Francis said they checked with other enclosed orders first about their experiences with social media.

“We asked did it encroach on community life, and they said, once the decision is made, the website itself doesn’t interfere with living the Poor Clare life.

“We are slow to take new steps. It is not the essence of our lives to be involved in social media. And we have chosen what to put on the website. But it is the herald of today.”

The order is named after Clare Offreduccio, a remarkable 13th-century figure known to the sisters as St Clare of Assisi. She was the first female follower of St Francis of Assisi.

Despite her wealthy family background, she left her secure future, under cover of darkness, on the night of Palm Sunday 1212, to join Francis and his followers. This pivotal moment was celebrated last night as Poor Clare communities around the world celebrated the 800th anniversary of their founding.

Clare spent most of her time moving from monastery to monastery with Francis’s band of friars and she was later joined by her younger sister, Agnes. Soon, other women, including her mother, joined and the Poor Clares began.

As leader, she decided to live a radically poor way of life and appealed to three popes to secure what she called the “privilege of poverty”.

They were very reluctant to grant her request but she persisted, and became the first woman in Church history to write a rule of life for religious women and to get it approved.

Her Form of Life, which laid down the ground rules for the enclosed Poor Clare life, was approved by the pope the day before she died in 1253. She was made a saint two years later.

The first Mass at the Cork monastery was celebrated at midnight on Christmas Eve, 1914.

It was a dream come true for local businessman Walter Dwyer, whose daughter, Maria, was a Poor Clare sister based in Tournai, Belgium.

Mr Dwyer knew he was dying and desperately wanted his daughter to be close to him in his final days.

He confided in his friend, Fr Willie Doyle, a Jesuit priest, who suggested the establishment of a Poor Clare monastery in the city, which Mr Dwyer agreed to finance.

Fr Doyle contacted the Poor Clare sisters in Carlow who had opened a monastery in Dublin in 1906. Mr Dwyer then contacted the Bishop of Cork, Dr O’Callaghan, who, in due course, gave his blessing to the founding of a Poor Clare monastery in Cork.

The Dwyer family attended the first Mass at the monastery on College Rd, along with the first two of the founding sisters — Sr Maria Dwyer and Sr Angela Tait from Scotland.

Within days they were joined by sisters from the Carlow community.

The community has grown and in 1952 five sisters set up a new foundation in Scotland, which is now based in Bothwell, outside Glasgow.

More sisters left from Cork in 1958 to establish another foundation in Ennis, Co Clare.

Today, there are eight sisters — Sr Francis, Sr Faustina, Sr Miriam, Sr Clare, Sr Anthony Mary, Sr Mary, Sr Bernadette, and the mother abbess, Sr Colette Marie — living in the monastery on College Rd.

They have taken vows of poverty, chastity, prayer and obedience.

Once they enter the monastery, they effectively say goodbye to their families and the outside world, and commit to spending the rest of their lives behind the monastery walls. There is a cemetery at the rear of the building where the nuns will be buried.

They follow a strict code of only being allowed to leave in times of emergency or training, only seeing their families three times a year, and of getting up at 5.30am and being in bed for 8pm daily.

They wear sandals, handmade full-length brown habits, a white roundabout over their heads, and a black veil.

They wear brown rosary beads around their waists, with seven decades of the rosary, and a white belt with four knots to symbolise their vows. They also wear special rings, symbols of their betrothal to Christ.

They take it in turns to kneel in prayer for 15 minutes before the Blessed Sacrament in their private chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.

They receive hundreds of letters from people around the country asking for their prayers. These letters are placed in a basket at the foot of the altar in their private chapel.

Members of the public are welcome to drop in to their public chapel for prayer, or to meet and chat with a sister who sits hidden behind a grille at set opening times.

People visiting sick relatives in the Bon Secours hospital next door, and UCC students passing the front door to and from the bustling campus up the road, are amongst the more regular visitors to their sanctuary of silence.

They rely entirely on the outside world for their survival and the community has been sustained by the generosity of generations of Corkonians. However, they say they have seen queues beginning to form outside their monastery in recent years as more and more people turn to prayer as the effects of the recession take their toll.

Sr Faustina, from Newmarket in North Cork, is the most recent sister to join the foundation — that was in 2005.

Sr Colette Marie, who grew up in Templemore and joined the order aged 21, said the community hopes the website and YouTube clips will help inform any young woman who feels a call to God.

“We hope that if there is a young woman out there searching, or who feels she may have a vocation, that she can check us out,” she said.

“Maybe some people will check it out of curiosity — we are a curiosity to some people — but we hope some people will get something more out of it.

“St Clare is an inspiring figure. She was a courageous young woman who broke the mould.

“She put her life in God’s hands. She chose to live an insecure life, trusting in God.

“She did what she felt God wanted to do. She is a model for now.”

Sr Francis, who grew up in Waterford with dreams of becoming a jockey, said she was first attracted to the Poor Clare life when she lived in digs across the road from the monastery during her time studying at UCC.

“I used to call in to the monastery to talk to the sisters and would come out feeling confident and secure,” she said. “People expect us not to be normal. We are a curiosity item to people — but the reaction is never negative.

“This life is a call from God. There is great fulfilment in it.

“Enclosure in the Poor Clares is a physical thing to cultivate our relationship with God. We don’t expect the website will cause any problems for us.”

And she offered hope to people going through suffering.

“We hear about people losing their jobs, fathers not being able to provide for their children, people contemplating suicide, and people begin to crumble,” she said.

“But we say, hang on a second. There’s something bigger. You’re not on your own. For 800 years, we’ve been living on air, like the birds. God’s message is do your best and I will take care of the rest.”

Sr Colette Marie said by reaching out through the website, they ultimately hope to draw more people to God, and offer them hope.

“People are less conscious of God today. There is so much suffering around at the moment and our message is that God is there for these people,” she said.

Rosary, evening prayer, and benediction take place at the monastery at 5pm every Sunday, and are open to the public. The sisters meet the public from 10.30am to 11.30am and 2pm to 4pm, but the monastery, which is closed for Lent, in November and December, and on the first Sunday of every month, will reopen on Easter Sunday.

You can write to the community at The Poor Clares, College Rd, Cork.

* www.poorclarescork.ie