Sister Gemma Simmons
speaker
14 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2015
last heard May 2015
Sister Gemma Simmons’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
There was a time when it was quite difficult for girls to have equal access to secondary education.
And you are getting now a cohort of women in Africa who have been better educated and therefore who are aspirational.
And that would be the same thing within the church, who see possibilities open to them in the church...
for an active life, for leadership within the community, for service in a whole variety of ways, but also carries with it the possibility of flourishing in ways that marriage and family life doesn't always offer the African woman.
I think one has to be careful.
This isn't about people just coming over to England in order to join a religious order, because religious orders are subject to the Home Office regulations about immigration and visas, just like everybody else.
What we do sometimes get is people from, say, other parts of the European Union who've come over here, who've settled, and then from there think that they want to join a religious order and opt to join the order in this country as opposed to their country of origin.
I belong to a network of
where people who are interested in religious life from all around the world can write in and say, your order looks like the profile of an order I'd like to explore a bit more.
And I suppose I get about 20, 25 applications a year from people from Nigeria, Indonesia, you know, all over Africa and Asia.
I always answer them, but would normally say, look, you would be subject to visa restrictions.
We cannot simply take people who are only able to stay here for a short time.
Would you like me to put you in touch with a religious order in your own country?
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