religious sisters
Women in habits
Religious sisters are women who have taken vows and live in a religious community, typically Catholic.
Unlike nuns, who live cloistered lives of prayer, religious sisters engage in active ministry—teaching, nursing, social work.
The distinction matters within the Church, though outsiders often use the terms interchangeably: The religious sisters ran the hospital for over a century.
- BenedictineMonk following ancient rule
- conventsHouses for religious sisters
- DominicanPreaching order member
- consecrationDedicating to sacred purpose
- bride of ChristWoman spiritually married to Jesus
vow of poverty · teaching · vocation · nursing · abbeys · prayer · postulant · Franciscan · celibacy · novitiate · missionary work · social justice advocacy · Carmelite · chastity · pastoral care · obedience · contemplative life · cloistered life
- CatholicismVatican, cardinals, pope, Holy Communion, popes
- Churchwomenchurchwomen, women's ministry, women pastors, women preachers, deaconesses
- holy womenabbesses, Virgin Mary, Saint Mary, Saint Anne, Saint Teresa
- monasticsmonk, nun, abbot, nuns, abbess
- nunsnun, nuns, convent, convents, habit
- religious lifenovitiate, motherhouse, convent life, community life, perpetual vows
religious sistersmonks
Cloistered religious men
friars · brothers · monastics · abbots · Benedictine monks
religious sisterslaywomen
Unordained female believers
married women · housewives · laypeople · career women · mothers
religious, religion, religiosity, religiously, irreligious, religiousness, sister, sisters, sisterly