Seyram Mary Adzokpa grew up attending a Catholic church but first encountered a nun in adulthood. She saw two Dominican sisters enter a Texas store.
“I can’t explain what it felt like—but it was a pull,” she recalls.
In 2024, Pope Francis urged religious orders to pray for more priests and nuns. The number of men and women entering Catholic religious life is plummeting in parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. And the population is aging. Less than 1% of nuns in the United States are 30 or younger.
Adzokpa watched a film about Henriette DeLille. In 1842, DeLille helped found the Sisters of the Holy Family, an order of nuns in New Orleans, Louisiana. Adzokpa joined that community in 2021 at age 27.
She thought her decision might grieve her immigrant parents. They moved to America from Ghana to pursue education and work opportunities. Adzokpa trained as a nurse.
“Here I am telling them that I’m throwing it all away to go be poor and obedient and chaste,” she says.
Her family’s support surprised her. Now Adzokpa uses her nursing experience to help care for elderly nuns.
Between 100 and 200 young women enter a Catholic religious vocation each year in the United States. Becoming a nun takes seven to 10 years. Only about half those who enter Catholic religious life stay for final vows.
Zoe Stapleton grew up an only child in a tight-knit family outside Hershey, Pennsylvania. She was 24 and on a hike with her parents when she revealed her desire to become a nun. Her mother expressed concern about all that Zoe would give up. But after weeks of processing, her mother found peace.
Stapleton is in the process of joining the Franciscan Sisters, Third Order Regular of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother in Toronto, Ohio. Penance includes actions meant to make amends for sins committed. The Franciscan Sisters’ website notes that members do penance by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Most Christian believers in other denominations believe acts of prayer, fasting, and giving are expressions of gratitude for Christ’s grace and a response to a loving relationship with Him—not to make amends for sins.
Stapleton also had to change her wardrobe. The sisters wear modest habits consisting of long white veils and gray robes. She says, “If you look like everyone else, they’re not going to know who you’re living for.”
The order’s website observes that prayer is the sisters’ primary ministry. They also serve at a food warehouse, hold Bible studies, and visit shut-ins.
Why? All people are called to consecrate their lives to God. Christ equips us to serve others as an act of worship, and His death—not rites or rituals we perform—completes atonement for our sins.
