WS MoreOrLess: Nuns on the rise
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This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service.
I'm Tim Harford. As the general election looms here in the UK, the nation's newspapers are scrutinising what they see as the crucial issue facing the country. A sudden surge in the number of nuns. Sister Act. How nuns are staging a surprise comeback in the UK.
Having none of it, growing numbers of British women take up the habit.
Women becoming nuns hits 25-year high. Our nun correspondent, Hannah Moore, joins me now. And can we agree right now, Hannah, to avoid terrible puns?
I think that's what everyone wants, Tim. Although I am the best reporter, bar none. So this story is based on data from the Catholic Church showing that the number of new nuns in England and Wales has trebled in five years.
And that might sound surprising in the context of a more secular society. There are fewer Christians in the UK, and the nuns seem to be bucking the trend. So, Hannah, there are three times as many new nuns. Three times what, exactly?
Three times not very much, Tim. In 2009, 15 women entered training to become Catholic nuns. That's known technically as formation. Last year, 45 women did.
So you could fit all last year's new nuns on a double-decker bus. You can supply your own punchline here, I suppose, if you have one.
How did UK headlines describe a reported surge in women training to become nuns?
You'd still have room for luggage.
Yes. The proportion of adult women deciding to enter training and learn to be a nun each year has soared from 0.0006% to almost 0.0002%.
So not only are those numbers difficult to say, they're also very, very small. Give us the context. What's the historical trend?
Overall, the number of new nuns was higher in the 1980s than it is today. But the basic story is that nuns have been dying or leaving their orders in greater numbers than new nuns are joining up. The total number of nuns in Great Britain has fallen by a third in the past two decades, and it's now 6,000.
So that's the British perspective, Hannah. What about the trend outside the UK?
the number of nuns is falling across Europe. But we see a different story in Africa, where the number of nuns has increased from 64,000 in 2007 to 69,000 in 2013.
I think if you look at Africa, one of the things that's changed in the last 10, 20 years is the access to education for girls and women.
This is Sister Gemma Simmons. She's the director of the Religious Life Institute at Haythrop College at the University of London in the UK.
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.
So is this the Pope Francis effect, you know, fashionable new Pope from Argentina, first ever Pope from outside Europe?
Possibly in the UK, although you could argue that the tiny uptick in new trainee nuns was already happening. The rise in the number of nuns in Africa predates Pope Francis's ordination in 2013 and the overall trend in the Americas has been downward. So we'll see if Pope Francis reverses that and South American women start getting in the habit.
Oh, none of your nun puns around here, Hannah. Hannah Moore, thank you very much. You're listening to More or Less with me, Tim Harford. Loyal listeners may remember Matt Parker, author of Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, dishing out mathematical advice on our programme ahead of Valentine's Day this year.
When you're looking for a life partner, as you're interviewing people, or I believe dating is what it's commonly called, as you're going through the candidates... If you meet a candidate and you assess their qualities and then you reject them, later on, it's very hard to go back and say, look, I've changed my mind.
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