A former alcoholic, a successful manager, a woman poet, and a children’s animator: the female protagonists of “The Convent”, the programme due to be transmitted by the BBC 2 channel beginning on Wednesday 14 June, have already shared for six weeks the life of the community of Poor Clares in Arundel, a monastery of Franciscan sisters in the South of England. The series hopes to repeat the success of “The Monastery”, the programme broadcast in May last year, which followed the entry of a group of men into the Benedictine monastery of Worth and attracted an audience of 2.4 million, 10% of the whole British TV audience. At the start the four women guests had a struggle to get acclimatized to a life disciplined and regulated by the worship of God: they brought wine and cigarettes into the convent, though banned by the Poor Clares, or ran races in the garden with electric lawnmowers, but the sisters showed tolerance. The maternal tenderness of the Poor Clares, their patience and wisdom in the end bore fruit. The four guests felt able to admit their vulnerability, the reason that led them to enter a convent in the first place: a constant sense of inadequacy for Debi Ireland, the children’s animator, a weakness for the other sex for Iona Maclean, former alcoholic, a constant sense of emptiness in her own life for Angela Dickson, a wealthy and successful manager, twice divorced, and the conflict between need for security and fidelity to her own freedom of spirit for the poet Victoria Bennett. What results this experience will bring it is too early to tell. Debi at least was transformed by the experience: she admits she returned to her husband and son as a new person. For the Poor Clares in Arundel the experience was an opportunity for witness. “We wanted to communicate to our guests the idea that life is good and is worth living and that there is a God who loves us in an unconditional way”, explained Sister Angela Aelred, abbess of the convent.
