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Associated Press

The first time Sister Seyram Mary Adzokpa felt pulled towards religious life was walking in a Walmart store in the US state of Texas, at the age of 25, with her mother.
Born in Ghana, West Africa, Adzokpa had never encountered a nun. Her family attended the Catholic Church faithfully, but she knew nothing of the religious life and always thought marriage would be her path.
“I wanted a husband like my dad. With three kids. I had the names of my two girls picked out,” she said.
Eleven years after moving to the United States, she was introduced to this new possibility as she watched two Dominican sisters enter the store.
Despite having a career and a life that I enjoyed, still being able to respond to this call is God’s persistence
Sister Seyram Mary Adzokpa
“I still cannot describe the feeling,” she said remembering how perfectly pressed their habits were.
“My heart just – I can’t explain what it felt like – but it was a pull.”

But it was not until the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, about a year later, that she fully embraced the call.
“There was fear. Absolutely,” said Adzokpa, who at the time was working on the front lines as a nurse.
“However, there was also a desire to cling, or reach out for someone who knew what was going on. And that person would be God.”
Adzokpa came across a film about the Venerable Henriette DeLille, one of three founders of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, the community which she would officially join in September 2021 at 27 years old.
But before she could join, she had to tell her family. And as a child of immigrants, she feared disappointing them.
“They made this trip for us,” she said. “Came to the United States for better education, better life, a career, the American dream, right? And then here I am telling them that I’m throwing it all away to go be poor and obedient and chaste.”

To her surprise, their support was overwhelming.
“I thank God for that,” she said.
Three years later, Adzokpa has said her temporary vows with the order and is using her nursing experience to help care for the elderly sisters in the community, whose average age is about 80.
She has found a balance between medicine and spirituality that she had been craving but was missing out in the world.
“Despite having a career and a life that I enjoyed, still being able to respond to this call is God’s persistence,” she said. “I truly believe that when he calls you, he will hunt you down. He will not stop fighting.”

Similarly to Adzokpa, it was a challenge for Zoey Stapleton, 24, to fathom being apart from her family so permanently. But if she were to pursue the persistent call to religious life, this would be the reality.
“We have a very, very tight bond,” said Stapleton, who grew up an only child in Pennsylvania.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in clinical psychology and a master’s in mental health counselling from Franciscan University in Ohio, she found herself back home.
This is a change of life. You’re giving up so many worldly things.
Peggy Stapleton to her daughter, Zoey, about to become a nun
Steam rose around her cheeks as she sautéed vegetables while cooking dinner with her mother, Peggy, on an evening in July. Her father, Tom, occasionally walked into the kitchen, reminiscing over old family photos and discussing their coming annual trip to the New Jersey coast.
This would be their last family holiday before Stapleton entered the religious community, the Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R. of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother, in Ohio.
They set the kitchen table for dinner and as the sun faded, they sat to bow their heads in prayer before enjoying the home-cooked meal.
Although the news of both her decision and acceptance into the religious institute did not come as a complete surprise to her parents, their own acceptance was not always easy.

Choking back tears after dinner, Peggy Stapleton remembered asking her fellow parishioners at St Joan of Arc Catholic Church to pray for them.
“This is a change of life,” she said to her daughter as they sat together in the living room. “You’re giving up so many worldly things.”
Zoey, who still enjoys painting, used to draw pictures of the house she hoped to have, said Peggy. “It was like it just came crashing down.”
But after weeks of processing, she found peace.
In early August, Stapleton joined the order as a postulant. She waved from the steps of the motherhouse as her parents drove down the winding driveway, her mother waving back from the sunroof of their car.
And just months later, as the sisters’ voices rang out into the vaulted wood ceilings of the chapel during Mass, her parents could be found in the pews just a few rows behind her.

Leap of faith
Stapleton will be among the less than one per cent of nuns in the United States today who are 30 or younger. That number has remained steady in the past decade but shows little signs of increasing.
Between 100 and 200 young women enter into a religious vocation each year in the US. Some never complete the process to become a nun.
Those who do are giving up many trappings of modern life for the sake of an immersive religious life and intergenerational community, at a time when the average age of an American nun is 80.
Just last year, Pope Francis urged orders to pray harder for more priests and nuns as he acknowledged the number of men and women entering Catholic religious life continues to plummet in parts of the world, including Europe and the US.

The number of nuns in the US peaked in 1965 at 178,740, and declined to 39,452 by 2022, according to the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
Stapleton – raised a Catholic, and having attended Catholic schools – was familiar with nuns, but it was with the Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R. of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother that she found a deeper connection.
In August, she and two other women joined the community nestled in the hills of Toronto, Ohio, as postulants.
The Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R, were founded in 1988 – newer than many religious communities.
Others established in that era include the Sisters of Life, which is active in anti-abortion causes and which Stapleton briefly considered joining.

The order’s patron saint, Francis of Assisi, led a life of poverty. In emulation, the sisters dress modestly, wearing long white veils and grey robes that many choose to pair with modern sandals. The sisters think of this as their wedding garments as “brides” of Christ.
The women abstain from other forms of modernity, using only a set of shared flip phones and the internet when necessary for their ministry.
On average, the full process to become a Catholic sister takes seven to 10 years.
Commonly, one enters as a postulant and lives at least part-time with the order. A woman is officially called a sister when she enters the novitiate stage, which is followed by the canonical novitiate, a year dedicated to prayer and studying the vows of the order.
Then she makes temporary vows and eventually perpetual, or final vows.


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Sister Seyram Mary Adzokpa in the chapel at the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Holy Family. She officially joined the order in September 2021 at 27. Photo: AP

Sister Seyram Mary Adzokpa (right), of the Sisters of the Holy Family, sings during morning Mass. Photo: AP

Adzokpa prays with a rosary. Photo: AP

Zoey Stapleton, a postulant with the Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R. of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother, at Mass. Photo: AP

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Stapleton prays during morning Mass. Photo: AP

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Stapleton talks to her parents after Mass. Photo: AP

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