Current mutations of the monastic novitiate: Emerging institutional imperatives, new forms of obedience

Hidden in the mountains of central Catalonia is a female Benedictine monastery founded in the mid-50s. It is the most recently established of four Benedictine women’s monasteries in the region. Actually, it is the only one that still continues as a living intergenerational community of more than 30 nuns. During the daily Liturgy of the Hours, a group of around ten nuns in their 30s and 40s fill the wooden choir seats in the modern and austere church. This group of younger nuns were admitted to the novitiate during the '90s and, along with their elders, sing the Gregorian chants in the canonical hours with spirit. This new generation, which is gradually filling the places of the previous one, usually wears trousers under their black habits and one of them has even occasionally referred to God with a feminine pronoun.