Nun turns to Twitter to encourage others

Sister Elizabeth Pio has devoted her life to prayer, hospitality and helping others. Now she is using Twitter to live out her life's calling even more.

The 41-year-old nun tweets words of encouragement on behalf of the Sisters of Bethany, an Anglican religious order in Southsea.

The Sisters of Bethany is a religious order for women which is part of the Anglican church. Members of the community take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, pray daily for the unity of all Christians, and welcome Christians of all backgrounds to join them and explore their spirituality.

In between services in the chapel and private prayer in her room, Sister Elizabeth logs on to her PC to send a message to the order's 100 followers.

The tweets range from nuggets of church history, to spiritual insights to help followers in their day.

More recently, she's been highlighting the plight of an Iranian pastor facing execution.

For Sister Elizabeth, social media is proving to be a valuable tool to communicate with the world outside the order and show that nuns are "not so far behind the times".

“We recognised that social media was how people often communicated these days, so it made us have a look at it,” she said.

“We believe it’s a way of fulfilling the commandment to love God and love each other – we can express love for God on Twitter and we try to help others to discover his love.

“I have a bit of a missionary streak and I think it’s great that we can communicate with an online community, most of whom we’ll never meet. It shows that nuns are human beings, not pious people who are always thinking about spiritual things.

"And it’s important to show that nuns and monks can use current technology – we’re not so far behind the times."

She admits that it is a learning curve for the nuns, but even the Reverend Mother and other Sisters have given it a go.

“We try to find things to say that will be uplifting, things we’ve heard or seen around the house, or prompts to prayer," she explains.

"But it’s not all spiritual. Some things are much more down-to-earth that we hope everyone can relate to.

“It’s not just a one-way thing, of course. We learn from others by being involved with social media. We receive so much information and insight from other people too.

“I don’t have a smartphone, so I can’t update it on the move. But I do think it’s important not to ignore any way of communicating about God.”

To follow the Sisters of Bethany, see www.twitter.com/bethanysister or search for @bethanysister. For more information about the Sisters of Bethany, see www.sistersofbethany.org.uk