Cocooning, self-isolation, social distancing — the life of a nun for hundreds of years

Cocooning, self-isolation, social distancing — it’s been a whole new way of life for most of us — but for contemplative nuns, it’s been a way of life for the best part of a millennium. In the first of a two-day series on nuns in Ireland today, Eoin English speaks to members of two contemplative orders about life behind the monastery walls, falling vocations and their hopes for the future, and to one young woman about why she’s made her first profession of monastic vows at the only Cistercian monastery for women in Ireland

Sr Emma makes First Profession of her monastic vows on Sunday, July 11 — the feast of St Benedict. She was given the religious name Sr Beatrice.

The nuns of St Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn, Co Waterford, home to the only Cistercian monastery for women in Ireland, have recently welcomed the first newly professed member since 2015 into their community.

Emma Brady, 26, from Cavan, who graduated with a law degree from Trinity College Dublin in May 2018, entered the monastery as a postulant in September and became a novice in July 2019, made her first profession of monastic vows on Sunday, July 11, taking the religious name Beatrice.