Earlier this week, nuns from the missionary group formed a human chain around a digger to prevent the activists from chaining themselves to it.

However, the clash turned physical when an unnamed nun from the Notre Dame Missionary Family sprinted across a muddy field to tackle a protester who appeared to be carrying two plastic pipes.

A video captured the sister rushing a protester.

The look on the protester's face as he was intercepted and thrown down like a sack of potatoes is priceless.

While some hailed the nun a hero for her impressive athleticism, others were stunned.

"I didn't expect that," co-president of the association for the future of the Bourges valley Sylvain Hérenguel told public broadcast channel France 3.

"I expected the nuns to be a little reasonable for the public order"!

The Notre Dame Missionary Family is a traditionalist Catholic religious congregation.

According to The Times, the bishop of Viviers, Jean-Louis Marie Balsa, told the religious community to abandon the project because it was excessively large.

But the nuns ignored the bishop.

France 3 reports the church construction began in 2018 and has been a bone of contention for years.

The climate activists and the Catholic clergy who support the project will meet with local officials on Thursday in an effort to resolve the ongoing dispute.

Meanwhile, the tackling nun is probably at the gym preparing for a repeat performance of her legendary defensive manoeuvre.

And, as for the bishop who ordered the nuns to stop the construction, he better watch out.

Comments posted online include:

• "Nuns are legitimately superheroes."
• "She's having nun of it!"
• Catholic radio host Adrian Fonseca remarked that the "only problem is that more people aren't helping her."
• "Sister of no Mercy."

Sources

• Western Journal
• Fox News
• Metro
• The Times

Anderson said she has always incorporated faith into her morning routine, waking up each morning around 4 or 5 a.m. Read more

The video shows a police officer identified as Garda O'Connell playing "keepy-uppy" with an unnamed nun from the Dominican order in the city of Limerick in southwest Ireland. Have a look

They are professionally seasoned or just starting out; unmarried, widowed and divorced; ethnically and culturally diverse.

All over the country, women currently discerning a call to the vowed life are participating in a process of spiritual, educational and community formation that can involve considerable self-scrutiny and present challenges along the way.

"God calls women from all different walks of life, from different stages, and all sorts of women," says Mary Gautier, senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

A 2012 CARA survey of youth and young adults on vocations, conducted for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 10 percent of never-married female respondents had considered becoming a sister at least a little seriously.

"The only consistent influence is that God is calling," Gautier says. "You don't have to be religious to work in a hospital or teach, but there is something special about living in community, sharing a public charism, and making a public statement about how God is working in your life."

Recent studies by CARA (which also include men) highlight some characteristics shared by those in the U.S. pursuing a call to life in a religious community.

In a survey of the "Entrance Class of 2015," respondents, both female and male, on average reported that they were 19 when they had first considered religious life, yet the average age of entrants was 30.

Most were born in the United States, and 71 percent identify as white, 13 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Asian, and 6 percent black.

Most had already earned a bachelor's degree, most came from families in which both parents are Catholic and many were active volunteers in their parish. Continue reading

Sources

• An article in Global Sisters Report, written by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans, a religion columnist for Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., as well as a freelance writer.
• Image: Townhall.com

"I was a go-between between the underwriters and the customers," said Sister Virginia Joy, a former high school soccer star from South Carolina now wearing a habit of white and navy blue.

She was fighting Midtown Manhattan traffic, late for a lunch with some other nuns. "I was overwhelmed by the Lord's generosity in my life, and I wasn't fulfilled in this job," she said.

In 2009, at age 28 and then known as Virginia Cotter, she joined the Sisters of Life.

Young women joining religious orders have become increasingly rare over the years. The number of "women religious" in the United States is about 50,000, less than a third of that in 1966.

According to a Georgetown University study, "there are more Catholic sisters in the United States over age 90 than under age 60."

The younger nuns can be a surprising bunch. While many in the older generation moved to the left after the 1960s, in theology and politics — a trend that led in part to Pope Benedict XVI's investigation of American nuns in 2012 — younger nuns tend to be more conservative.

They want to wear the habit. While they work outside their communities, they have a strong focus on contemplative life, making time for hours of daily communal prayer. And they tend to have a strong sense of a particular mission.

Take, for example, the Sisters of Life, the religious order of Sister Virginia Joy.

Many of the nuns are in their 20s or 30s and have a commitment that can be divisive even in the Roman Catholic Church: "promoting life," which in practice includes an emphasis on discouraging abortions.

The members may hold to traditional teachings, but as they see it, there is nothing more countercultural in 2015 than a young woman's becoming a nun — eschewing careerism, material possessions, sex.

Two other traditionalist orders — a Dominican order in Nashville, and one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which has expanded to Austin, Tex. — have attracted national attention; in 2010, the Ann Arbor nuns even made it on "Oprah." Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: Tom Perna

Sister Lucy epitomised everything brilliant about parochial education. She was incredibly strict but also unbelievably smart, witty, kind and a beautiful person who strove to make a complete human being out of every student she came in contact with.

Sister would often regale us with real-life stories before beginning the day's lesson and what she shared the day she came to class, not quite her vivacious self, struck a chord with a room full of young, inexperienced teachers-in-training.

That morning Sister had gone into the teacher's lounge for her routine cup of coffee. She looked everywhere in the room but could not find the modest cup that she had used every day for the past 10 years to drink out of.

No one ever touched "her" cup - so where could it have disappeared? As she took a disappointed sip out of another cup, she caught a glimpse of a new student-teacher, using it. Sister was relieved but somewhat bothered by this rather innocuous act but the very next minute she felt sadder and angrier than ever before at herself.

She explained to us that at that very moment she felt like a complete failure because 40 years ago when she had decided to become a nun, she had renounced everything worldly and the fact that she felt so attached to an insignificant coffee cup, showed that her life's work had been tainted and squashed.

The story was a confession of sorts and by sharing it with us Sister was making sure that such a transgression would never occur again. Continue reading

• Rumni Saha is a newspaper columnist, a Special Education Teacher and lives in Boston.