Sisters of Our Lady of Reconciliation/UK Sisters

[lanpingpug]

I'm not Catholic myself but many of my family are and they always joke about me becoming a nun as I'm not married yet at age 36.

This got me to thinking: just how many orders/communities are there in the UK? I've been able to find a lot of the more well known online but often websites are not up to date and the links are broken. 

Sisters of Our Lady of Reconciliation are a case in point. There is a lot of info about them in 2014 or so but then nothing. Did they disband or were they suppressed? I have no idea how to find out. 

Also, does anyone know of any lesser known communities/orders that might easily be overlooked? 

Thanks so much, guys! 

[Nunsuch]

http://www.ukreligiouslife.org/

 

[Sister Leticia]

Hi

Nunsuch has already provided the link to a website from the England-Wales National Office of Vocation which contains lists of all the religious orders with at least one community in England and Wales. So you can browse to your heart's content!

As for the Sisters of Our Lady of Reconciliation... I don't think they still exist - and it's a sad story. They were two ex-Anglican religious who left the CofE and their order to join the Ordinariate. Then one of them died of cancer, still only in her 60s, I think in about 2016. The other one, Sr Jane Louise, is listed on the Ordinariate's website as "continuing the work of" a different community - but please don't ask me what that means, officially, as I have no idea! 

http://www.ordinariate.org.uk/organisation/religious.php

[beatitude]

Sr Jane Louise is still living in Walsingham as a religious sister. I ran into her a few times when I was there on my last pilgrimage. I didn't speak to her, as the only time our paths crossed were at Mass and when she was giving a talk in the chapel to some other pilgrims. I'm not sure if she is still able to welcome women to join her or if she is just living as a solitary now, but the best way to find out would be to write to her care of the Catholic shrine at Walsingham. She's involved there.

[clareagnes]

I was discerning religious vocation in the Anglican Communion before I became Catholic, and I found a great book, which I highly recommend: New Habits, by Isabel Losada. The book is somewhat dated (from 2001) but it provides great interviews with several women religious (all Novices at the time) in different communities, both apostolic and contemplative. I found it helpful in discerning and ended up visiting one community profiled in the book, the Sisters of the Love of God, in Oxford. Another resource is Anglican Religious Life, which is a yearbook published every year of all religious communities in the Anglican communion (those living under vows, those in "dispersed" communities, etc.). It includes communities outside the UK/Wales but may be of interest as well. Both books are available on Amazon. Finally, there is the community of St. Anselm started by the Archbishop of Canterbury to foster religious vocations in a "neo-monastic" tradition that seems to have attracted a lot of young people: https://www.stanselm.org.uk/

Best of luck!