Spanish Convents Use Social Media To Recruit New Nuns

Guardian (UK) ^ | March 16, 2015 | Stephen Burgen

[Steelfish]

Spanish Convents Use Social Media To Recruit New Nuns

Stephen Burgen 16 March 2015 Visitors to the Spanish website buscoalgomas.com are greeted by a woman asking if they feel their lives are empty and if they’ve ever considered the religious life. “Don’t run away,” she says. “You may have a vocation without even knowing it.”

The woman is Noemí Saiz, and the website, which translates as “I’m looking for something more”, is used by dozens of Spanish convents to try to recruit nuns. Spain’s religious orders, which are also turning to Facebook, WhatsApp and other social networks as recruitment tools, are facing an uphill struggle: their numbers have slumped from 6,695 in 1966 to barely 250 today.

“The website serves as an intermediary between religious orders and young people,” says Saiz, who spent a year as a nun before deciding she didn’t have what it takes. “Religious institutions need to learn about marketing.”

Convents are learning fast and some have even taken advice on search engine optimisation in order to top Google rankings for terms such as “how to become a nun”.

In 2012 Olga María, the prioress of the barefoot Carmelite convent in Valladolid in north-east Spain, went to Rome to ask for two things: permission to let would-be nuns join the convent for a trial period to see if it suited them and also permission to use social networks to recruit young women.

Since then, the convent has gained more than 200,000 visits to its website, more than 8,000 likes on Facebook, and 461 Twitter followers. It also uses a WhatsApp account to reply to women’s inquiries. The convent has grown from 18 to 30 nuns and the average age has fallen to 35.

“We get 20-30 inquiries a month,” María says,

[a fool in paradise]

“Rave at the old church. Come for the Gregorian chants. Stay for the social life.”