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Young Woman Leaves Career to Join Monastic Life After Meeting Pope in Lourdes
Developing
In Short: A 27-year-old sign language interpreter who grew up in foster care will join Cistercian nuns in Lourdes, hoping to confirm her call to monastic life.
A 27-year-old sign language interpreter who grew up in foster care will join Cistercian nuns in Lourdes, France, this weekend, hoping to confirm her call to monastic life.
Yohanna, who was placed in foster care at age 4, had no religious upbringing and sought spiritual guidance through New Age movements, which left her with tattoos.
Guided by her parish priest and the Archdiocese of Paris, she began discerning her vocation with apostolic sisters, despite initial skepticism about monastic life.
She credits her parish priest and the vocations service of the Archdiocese of Paris for helping her discern her path.
Yohanna's journey reflects a broader trend in France, where adult baptisms have reached a new record this year, driven largely by young adults.
Her decision to embrace monastic life comes as Pope Francis visits Lourdes, where tens of thousands of faithful are expected to gather.
Yohanna, who volunteers with people with disabilities, chose Lourdes for its exceptional fervor and its significance in her spiritual journey.
The Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Boulaur, a stronghold of monastic renewal in France, is where her vocation took shape, a few dozen miles from Lourdes.
What's still developing
- She began learning how to pray through online resources and quickly made prayer part of her daily life.
- “Given my personal background, I had enormous clichés about monastic life,” she said.
- It is no coincidence that Yohanna, a sign-language interpreter for deaf people, has chosen Lourdes to mark this new beginning after years of volunteering with people with disabilities.
- Like so many of her generation, she first went looking for answers in the spiritual movements close to the New Age that flourish among young French people — an exploration that left its mark, literally, in the tattoos she still carries.