How to Become a Nun: Requirements, Stages and Often 6 to 12 Years of Formation

To become a Catholic nun, an unmarried Catholic woman joins a religious community and passes through postulancy, a novitiate of at least a year and three to nine years of temporary vows before she makes final vows. Enclosed nuns need nine to twelve years; two active communities, Holy Cross and St. Joseph of Peace, describe six to ten.

The Code of Canon Law fixes the minimum rules for every Catholic community, and each community adds its own conditions, such as an age limit. Nothing in the process binds a woman before she is ready. “A novice can freely leave an institute” (canon 653), and first vows are made for a fixed term, after which she either renews them, makes final vows or leaves (canon 657).

How do you become a nun, step by step?

1. Pray and talk it over. Many first think of religious life young: the men and women who made final vows in the United States in 2024 had first considered it, on average, at 19. A priest, a spiritual director or a sister can help a woman test the idea, and there are prayers for discerning a vocation to use while she does.
2. Decide between a monastery and an active community. Nuns live an enclosed life of prayer in a monastery; sisters pray in community and work outside it, in schools, hospitals, parishes and social services. Each community also has its own charism, the spiritual focus and work its founder gave it.
3. Find communities and contact their vocation directors. In the United States the VISION Vocation Network of the National Religious Vocation Conference keeps a searchable directory of communities. Many communities hold “Come and See” visits, and 78 percent of the men and women who made final vows in 2024 had been on one. The women among them had known their community for four years, on average, before they entered.
4. Apply. The community checks health, character and maturity, which canon 642 tells superiors to verify “even by using experts, if necessary”, so an application may include a medical and a psychological assessment. Before the novitiate a candidate must show “proof of baptism, confirmation, and free status” (canon 645).
5. Get to know the community as an aspirant, then live with it as a postulant. Aspirancy is a time of inquiry: a Holy Cross aspirant carries on with her daily life while she gets to know the sisters, for six months to two years, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace have a getting-acquainted period of three months to a year before a woman moves in as a candidate. Postulancy, six months to two years at Holy Cross, lets her try the life from the inside while she is still free to go home.
6. Enter the novitiate, for one to two years, or two for nuns. At the Poor Clare monastery in Rockford, Illinois, a novice receives the habit and a new religious name; the Sisters of the Holy Cross give their novices the title of sister. The novitiate is kept for prayer and for learning the vows and the community’s life, and canon law forbids filling it with studies and jobs that do not serve that purpose (canon 652).
7. Make temporary vows. First profession binds her for a set term, usually three to six years, renewed when it runs out.
8. Make final vows, at 21 or over. Perpetual profession, which in monasteries of nuns is solemn profession, binds her for life.

How long does it take to become a nun?

Canon law sets the shortest path. The novitiate must include “twelve months spent in the community itself of the novitiate” (canon 648), and temporary profession is “not to be less than three years nor longer than six” (canon 655). A superior may extend temporary vows, but only so that the total “does not exceed nine years” (canon 657). That makes at least four years from the first day of the novitiate to final vows, before any time as an aspirant or postulant is counted.

Communities add to the minimum. The Sisters of the Holy Cross describe their formation as “approximately a nine-year process”. At the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, a year of candidacy and a two-year novitiate come before first vows, and perpetual vows follow “three to six years after temporary profession”: six to nine years from acceptance as a candidate, after a getting-acquainted period of three months to a year.

Enclosed nuns take longest. The Vatican’s 2018 instruction on women’s contemplative life, Cor Orans, sets initial formation in their monasteries at “no less than nine years and not more than twelve”: an aspirancy and a postulancy of at least a year each, a two-year novitiate and at least five years of temporary vows. The Poor Clare nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford give the same nine to twelve years.

What is the difference between a nun and a sister?

In everyday speech the two words are used for the same women, and both are addressed as Sister. Strictly, a nun professes solemn vows and lives a contemplative life in a monastery, usually enclosed, with her work done in and around the monastery. A sister professes simple vows and lives and works in the world, in teaching, health care, social justice or whatever ministry belongs to her congregation’s charism. Canon law keeps its strictest enclosure for nuns: “Monasteries of nuns which are ordered entirely to contemplative life must observe papal cloister, that is, cloister according to the norms given by the Apostolic See” (canon 667). What makes a vow solemn is the Church’s recognition: a vow is solemn “if the Church has recognized it as such; otherwise, it is simple” (canon 1192).

Neither a nun nor a sister is ordained. Religious profession is not holy orders, and canon law states that “A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly” (canon 1024), a question taken up in Can women become Catholic priests? A man cannot become a nun either: men who live the same life are monks or religious brothers.

What vows does a nun make?

She vows poverty, chastity and obedience, the evangelical counsels, which the Catechism says Christ proposes “to every disciple” (Catechism 915). Jesus told the rich young man, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” (Matthew 19:21), and he spoke of some who have made themselves eunuchs “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matthew 19:12), words the Church reads as a call to celibacy. Paul wrote that “The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit” (1 Corinthians 7:34). For a woman who follows that call, the Catechism goes on, the counsels become “the obligation of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience”.

The vows have practical edges. Before first profession, the Code says, members are “to cede the administration of their goods to whomever they prefer”, and before perpetual profession they are “to make a will which is to be valid also in civil law” (canon 668). Afterwards, “Whatever a religious acquires through personal effort or by reason of the institute, the religious acquires for the institute”: a sister’s salary as a teacher or nurse goes to her community.

What are the requirements to become a nun?

Church law opens the door widely: “Any Catholic endowed with a right intention who has the qualities required by universal and proper law and who is not prevented by any impediment can be admitted into an institute of consecrated life” (canon 597). Canon 643 makes entry to the novitiate invalid for “one who has not yet completed seventeen years of age”, for “a spouse, while the marriage continues to exist”, for a woman already bound to another institute and for anyone who enters “induced by force, grave fear, or malice”. Superiors are not to admit those who, “burdened by debts, cannot repay them” (canon 644), and they are to look for good health, suitable character and enough maturity for the life (canon 642).

Each community may add its own conditions (canon 643 §2), and the differences are real. Three communities’ own pages:

Debt can delay a vocation for years. “Most communities require that candidates enter religious life debt-free, with some exceptions made for educational debt,” says the VISION Vocation Network. In the 2024 class, 17 percent of the women making final vows said educational debt had delayed their entrance; among all those it delayed, men and women, the average delay was about three years. Most had studied first: 73 percent of that class had a college or graduate degree before entering.

A woman’s family may not cheer at first. In the same survey, 61 percent of the women said someone had discouraged them from considering religious life. One of the Rockford Poor Clares, asked how her family took her entering, answered, “Like most families, they found it difficult at first”. They came to love her vocation, she went on, and despite the limited contact of an enclosed life she felt closer to them than before.

Is there an age limit to become a nun?

Church law sets only minimums: 17 to begin the novitiate (canon 643), 18 for temporary vows (canon 656) and 21 for final vows (canon 658). Upper limits belong to each community. Some stop at 35, as the Rockford Poor Clares and the Holy Cross sisters do; the Sisters of Loretto have none. An undated list from the VISION Vocation Network names Benedictine monasteries that consider older women, among them Mother of God Monastery in Watertown, South Dakota, with a limit of 60, and the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho, with no age limit, and it warns that such policies change and should be checked with each community.

Communities with limits give practical reasons: the long years of formation, the habits of a woman who has lived on her own for decades, and, for small communities, the cost of caring for members who enter near old age. Women do enter later. The women who made final vows in 2024 were 38 on average, and the oldest was 69. For a woman whom no community can take, VISION points to forms of consecrated or committed life that may have no age limit: secular institutes, whose members commit themselves to chastity, poverty and obedience but live and work in the world, and the associates and third orders attached to many religious orders.

Can a married, widowed or divorced woman become a nun?

A married woman cannot, while the marriage lasts (canon 643). A widow is free to enter; the Sisters of Loretto, for one, name widows among the women they accept. Divorce is harder. The Church holds that a marriage that is ratified and consummated “can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death” (canon 1141), so a civil divorce does not make a woman free to enter. She first needs the Church’s declaration that her marriage was null, usually called an annulment. The Sisters of Loretto put it plainly: “If divorced, the woman must have a Decree of Annulment granted through the Church.”

Children are the other question. “Each community sets its own policy in regard to dependents,” VISION says. Loretto, for example, accepts “women whose children have reached adulthood and are no longer dependent”, and asks a woman to plan for the care of her own parents too.

Do you have to be a virgin to become a nun?

No. Canon law lists no such condition for religious life, and communities ask about the present instead; VISION’s questions for older women include, “Have you been living a celibate lifestyle for at least two years?” The requirement belongs to a different vocation, the order of virgins, women “consecrated to God by the diocesan bishop according to the approved liturgical rite” who usually live in the world rather than in a community (canon 604). For that consecration the Vatican’s 2018 instruction requires “that the person has never been married and has never lived in public or open violation of chastity”.

What does a nun’s day look like?

Canon law puts prayer first. “The first and foremost duty of all religious is to be the contemplation of divine things and assiduous union with God in prayer,” says canon 663, which asks religious to “make every effort to participate in the eucharistic sacrifice daily”, to read Scripture, to celebrate the liturgy of the hours, to honour Mary “also through the marian rosary” and to keep “an annual period of sacred retreat”. A nun in an enclosed monastery lives the whole day inside it, praying the hours with her community and working to support the house; under papal cloister she leaves only in the cases the law allows. A sister keeps the same duties of prayer and spends her working day in a school, a hospital, a parish or among the poor.

How many nuns are there today?

Far fewer than in the 1960s. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University counted 33,135 religious sisters, a figure that takes in nuns, in the United States at the start of 2025, against 178,740 in 1965. Worldwide there were 589,423 in 2023, down from 1,004,304 in 1970. In 2024, the American communities that answered CARA’s survey reported 91 women making perpetual vows; four in five communities had no one professing at all.

Do other churches have nuns?

Yes. “Religious life was born in the East during the first centuries of Christianity,” the Catechism notes (Catechism 925), and it continues in the Orthodox churches. In the Orthodox Church in America’s description, a woman is first a novice, usually for about three years, is then tonsured, and later takes life-long vows in the Lesser Schema, after which she is addressed as Mother. The Church of England “affirms that, since the time of the early Church, there have been Christian people who, in response to God’s call, have committed their whole lives to God in the religious life”, a life “marked by consecrated celibacy, poverty and obedience” (Canon DA 1). In Germany the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Protestant community, was founded in Darmstadt in 1947 “under the leadership of Mother Basilea Schlink and Mother Martyria Madauss”. “Our ministry is to live in reconciliation with one another and to trust God for all that we need,” the sisters write, and they pray “for our own countries, for God’s people Israel, and for reconciliation among the nations”. Anglican and Lutheran communities of women are the subject of Do Protestant churches have nuns? A Catholic community admits Catholics (canon 597), so a woman from another church who feels drawn to a Catholic order would first be received into the Catholic Church.

Related reading

• Prayers for discerning a vocation: marriage, priesthood, religious life and work
• Do Protestant churches have nuns? Yes, Anglicans and some Lutherans do
• Can women become Catholic priests?
• St. Francis of Assisi: his life and impact
• How monasteries spread Christianity