York: archaeologist sister makes vows in historic chapel

Naomi makes first profession

It may seem a long journey from being a Greenham Common protester to becoming a nun, but former member of the Greenham women’s camp Naomi Hamilton saw no contradiction as she made her first profession of vows on Saturday as a sister of the Congregation of Jesus in York’s historic Bar Convent. An international crowd of friends, family and sisters from as far as Chile, Korea and Slovakia as well as England and Germany gathered to witness Sister Naomi make vows of poverty, chastity and obedience into the hands of Sister Jane Livesey, the first British general superior of the congregation in over two hundred years.

"I felt called to religious life when I converted to the Catholic faith at university in Cambridge", says Sister Naomi, 53, "but there was no clarity to the call, so I got on with life and waited for things to get clearer". Naomi worked on digs around London for the Museum of London before doing a doctorate in Turkish archaeology. She subsequently worked as a jeweller and an administrator in the NHS. "That original call returned in a way that I couldn’t ignore, so I began to research religious orders and found a strong attraction to Mary Ward and the Congregation of Jesus."

During her two year period of training as a novice Sister Naomi did pastoral placements in a home for dementia sufferers, in youth ministry and in a homeless hostel for young people. "I was specially drawn to the ministry of justice and peace-making", she says, "as it echoes the six months that I spent at the peace camp in Greenham Common in the 1980s. Catholic Social Teaching calls on the same ideals as many of us shared in the peace movement. For the next few years I will be studying theology in London’s Heythrop College and doing more pastoral placements to help me explore further what God is inviting me to in religious life."

The congregation, begun by Yorkshire woman Mary Ward in 1609, was the first attempt to found an order of women modelled on the Jesuit order. The freedom and mobility that this essentially missionary life required was thought impossible for women of the time and drew great opposition within the church. "There is no such difference between men and women" declared the pioneering foundress, "that women may not do great things". The order was suppressed by papal decree in 1631 but subsequently spread from Germany and England across the world. Today there are sisters of the Congregation of Jesus and Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in every continent. Mary Ward was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

Sisters of the Congregation of Jesus have been working in education from the England’s oldest convent since 1686.

Today’s sisters at the Bar Convent www.bar-convent.org.uk/ run a conference centre and museum as well as St Bede’s Pastoral Centre www.stbedes.org.uk/.

Sisters in communities around Britain work in hospital and prison chaplaincies, spiritual ministries, education, medicine and media.

Looking to the future Sister Naomi says: "Our London community has just moved to a new area after 140 years in Hampstead, so we will all be building the future together. Today is one more step towards a goal I began dreaming of over twenty years ago."