Hand outstretched, smiling broadly, Sister Bernie stood in the doorway of the convent in San Francisco's Sunset District -- one nun acting as goodwill ambassador, tour guide and recruiting agent for the Catholic Church.
"Welcome to our house," she told several visitors as they crossed the once- forbidden threshold. Down the corridor she escorted them to the chapel, spiritual hearth of the 20-bedroom convent shared by 10 nuns.
Hoping to kick-start the ranks of its religious, the Roman Catholic church is increasingly lifting its veil, displaying the mosaic of lives devoted to God, the day-to-day reality of its earthbound emissaries.
As part of a Vatican program to honor its consecrated brethren, religious communities in the Bay Area and elsewhere opened their homes last weekend in a bid to spark spiritual vocations.
They offered tea and cookies -- and a pathway to spiritual fulfillment. The goal: to make life as a nun or a priest seem an option.
"I hope people will see that we are normal human beings, that they might encourage their daughters or sisters to join, that they won't look on this life as strange," says Sister Bernie, more formally known as Sister Bernadette Hart. She joined the Sisters of Mercy order 42 years ago.
The church faces a daunting challenge, however, for the number of religious has been steeply declining for decades. Today, there are 101,860 fewer nuns in the United States than in 1965, a drop of 57 percent, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. During the same period, the number of priests fell 23 percent, while the nation's Catholic population grew 32 percent.
"Sisters and priests are not on people's radar screens as much as (they) used to be," says Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We want to make members of consecrated life more visible."
Nowadays, nuns are less visible because there are fewer of them, but also because they no longer stand out in a crowd. The intimidating, starched habits of old became optional in 1981.
"I used to walk down the street and kids would say 'Mommy, what's that?' " says Sister Bernie. "It's kind of nice now not to be thought of as weird."
MISUNDERSTOOD WORLD
While nuns may have shed their habits, misconceptions still abound.
According to a national study released late last month, young Catholics have a high opinion of religious life but don't particularly know what it entails: a quarter of young Catholics sampled mistakenly said one must be a virgin to be a priest or sister.
"In the Bay Area, so many people have no idea what religious life is," says Sister Carla Kovack, vocation director for the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael.
"They have the myth of 'Sister Act' and 'The Nun's Story.' We want the public to see the life of the religious, to show that we are not clones of each other, and to perhaps plant seeds of invitation."
At Kovack's home, nuns warmly greeted the public with balloons, pamphlets and a professional videotape.
Visitors at other communities trouped through convent kitchens, even nuns' bedrooms.
While some, like Holy Name Convent in San Francisco, home to six Canoissian sisters and four Sisters of Mercy, were flooded by visitors, others fared less well.
At the Sisters of Social Service convent -- a two-story house in a tree- lined Oakland neighborhood -- several nuns waited with teapot and plate of cookies, but only one visitor showed. The order, which has 350 sisters worldwide, just celebrated its 75th anniversary.
"Last year, we had four or five people," said an ever-resilient Sister Chris Bennett.
COMPLEX JOURNEY
Where women once joined the nunnery while still in their teens, today the journey to the convent is markedly more complex, paved with doubt, disillusion, even absences from the church.
After a Los Angeles girlhood steeped in Catholicism, Mary Kieffer left home for San Francisco with $150, two suitcases, and a flat rejection of her faith.
She became a waitress, then a bartender.
More than a decade later, she returned to the fold, becoming deeply involved as a parishioner at St. Dominic's Church in San Francisco.
In her mid-40s, Kieffer -- then working as an office manager -- would spend lunch hour on the Internet, researching nun congregations. She'd find herself in tears, convinced she was too old.
Finally, she attended a vocation day held by the Dominican community.
"I finally found what I wanted to do," says Kieffer, now 48. "It felt as if I had come home."
Last weekend, in a joyful, sun-lit service at the San Rafael convent, Kieffer answered her call to God, accepting the pin of the Dominican sisterhood and becoming a novice nun, which will last about two years until she takes a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Kieffer typifies today's new nun. For them, the convent's a second career, filled with sisters working as physical therapists, lobbyists, counselors, administrators, university professors.
Sister Sherry Dolan gave up an income of $75,000 -- which in Bakersfield goes a long way, -- as a human resources director when she decided to become a Sister of Mercy.
"I was a professional woman with a great income, house, car, lots of accrued vacation," says Dolan who grew up in San Lorenzo. "On the other hand . . . this felt right to do. I felt that I could give to the world and also nurture my life of prayer and contemplation."
Some of her friends, however, were astounded.
"They said you? No!" says Dolan who is completing a master's degree. "It's part of the social mythology, people think nuns and priests are more perfect han regular human beings. They may be trying harder than some lay people, but just because someone takes on religious life doesn't make them a saint."
At age 55, more than six years down the path, Dolan is closing in on her final vows, which she hopes to take in 2004.
The process takes so long, in part, because the church wants to ensure that would-be religious are properly summoned by God, not trying to hide from the world.
"Sometimes people have the wrong motivation," says Sister Charlene Herinckx of the National Religious Vocation Conference in Chicago. "Some want security, a place to retire, to be guaranteed meals and friends. That's not a good reason. You have to be clear that you can serve God better this way than any other way."
In recent years, the Catholic Church has gained some of its foot soldiers from an unlikely quarter -- the mommy track. While no statistics are kept on the phenomenon, there's been a flurry of single women with grown children who've become nuns.
They're called Sister Moms. Some are widowed, but the majority are divorced and had their marriages annulled.
"Some people don't know it's possible -- they think once you've been married you can't become a nun," says Sister Bea Keller, 61, a mother of seven who entered the convent in 1991. Previously, she lived in Berkeley while earning a master's degree.
Now living in Louisville, she runs a Sister Moms support group with about 160 members.
"The question we always get is how can you leave your children? I say I didn't leave them, they had already grown and left me," Keller says. "My oldest son said he didn't understand why I'd want to do this. But they always rejoice over how happy I am."