A Spanish convent has placed a video on YouTube in a desperate attempt to revive their diminishing numbers.

Nuns in Spain have turned to the internet in a radical step to attract women to a life of solitude and prayer. The San Jose convent in the Andalucian town of Ecija has seen an alarming drop in numbers during the last decade. As the elderly nuns gradually pass away, they are not being replaced by new novices.

In an effort to save the 14th century Mudejar palace-turned-convent from closing, the mother superior, Mother Isabel, took the pioneering step of advertising the nunnery by placing a video titled ?Por que ser Carmelita Descalza? (Why not be a barefoot Carmelite?) on YouTube.

It has proven to be a huge success in its short time on the web, attracting nearly 30,000 visits, and attracting new viewers every day. The footage shows the nuns reading, praying, baking and sewing, behind a series of promotional written messages and concludes with the address, telephone number and email address of the convent.

The video has provoked a profusion of enquiries, leading to the first novice to join the convent in three years walking through its 400-year-old doors.

The footage has also created a lot of intrigue and commentary from YouTube viewers, most of which are complimentary and approving. One viewer remarked: “The video produces peace. I admire the people who are capable of renouncing all of life’s pleasures and the delivering their life as an ideal.”

Sister Joanna Harris from St Mary’s convent in Herefordshire has watched the video on YouTube and believes it is a good way to allow people to learn about life in a convent and their intimate relationship with God. According to the nun: “By promoting convents on the Internet it enables people who may be interested but also too embarrassed, to discover what really goes on in a convent.”

“I am excited about the huge amount of interest the video of the Spanish convent has created and I see it as an encouraging step forward,” she added.

In spite of a steady increase in the membership of the Catholic church, the number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by about a quarter during the reign of Pope John Paul. In light of these depressing statistics and in order to rescue their aging and diminishing San Jose convent, the 11 remaining nuns skipped a few centuries and jumped straight into the 21st in order to advertise their lifestyle to a worldwide audience.

Exposure on the internet of convents and the life nuns lead is not an entirely new thing. Some convents even have their own websites dedicated to promoting their existence. The Sisters of St Paul convent in Birmingham are astutely aware of the benefits of exposure on the World Wide Web. Their well-maintained and uplifting website gives a warm and moving indication of how life is lived in their convent. And as Mother Isabel from the San Jose convent in Southern Spain says: “If the rest of the world is on the internet, then why shouldn’t we be there too?”

The intriguing video can be viewed on the following link.

Gabrielle Pickard for RT