I have never been a religious or spiritual person, even though I grew up in a religious area and had friends (and strangers) throughout school and university trying to lure me into whatever prayer disguised as organised fun they were up to. I did try it out shortly for a desperate period when I was young, attempting to pray to a god I didn’t really believe in to make me not gay, but blessedly he never answered.

Despite my resistance to organised religion, I have always had a soft spot for nuns and their counterparts. The girlies.

This is probably partly due to pop culture, specifically Sister Act, but even more specifically Sister Act 2 (underrated). There are of course many real life horror stories involving nuns and people in similar positions of power, but nuns and the nun-adjacent are often portrayed as the kinder and more reasonable arm of the patriarchal power structures of organised religion – groups of women dedicated to a higher cause and direct hands-on caring for their communities (except Sister Michael from Derry Girls).

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This topic has been top of mind recently, since discovering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist Catholic order. I’m sure all of those words mean things, but I only know what I’ve seen on TikTok, which is that as part of their outreach, they’ve started a podcast. It’s just what God would want. The sisters themselves don’t have personal phones and don’t have anything........

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