News article by Catholic News Agency

According to a news article by Catholic News Agency, the Spanish daily El País published an article on Sister Veronica, a 43-year-old prioress who has revolutionized an old Poor Clares convent, turning it into a magnet for dozens of young professional women. The newspaper goes on stating, she "has become the biggest phenomenon in the Church since Teresa of Calcutta," as "she has made the old convent of Lerma into an attractive recruiting banner for female vocations. The majority of the young sisters who have been attracted to the cloister "have been in relationships and had careers." In addition, "None are immigrants. Most are from the middle class and thy have college degrees. This community offers a complete roster of lawyers, economists, physicists, and chemists, roadway engineers, industrial workers, agricultural workers and aeronautics engineers, architects, doctors, pharmacists, biologists and physical therapists, librarians, philologists, teachers and photographers" In an interview of one of the sisters by El País defines the cloister as "a house open to those who knock on our door. We want to share our faith, to make known what is happening to us." The growth of the cloister since the arrival of Sister Veronica has been explosive: In 1994, when she was appointed mistress of novices at the age of 28, nearly 30 sisters entered. In the years from 2002 to 2005 there were 269 sisters who entered, and late last September there were 134.