THE NUN AND MONK WHO FELL IN LOVE AND GOT
MARRIED
Twenty-four years after becoming a nun, it was a brief touch of the sleeve of a monk in the parlour of the convent in Preston, Lancashire, that changed everything for Sister Mary Elizabeth.
The prioress of the order had taken her to meet the friar Robert,
who was visiting from a priory in Oxford, to see if he wanted anything to eat. But Sister Mary Elizabeth's superior was called away to take a phone call, so the two were left alone.
"It was our first time in a room together. We sat at a table as he ate, and the prioress didn't come back so I had to let him out."
Sister Mary Elizabeth had lived a devout, austere and mostly silent life as a nun, spending most of her days in her "cell". As she let Robert out of the door, she brushed
his sleeve and says she felt something of a jolt.
"I just felt a chemistry there, something, and I was a bit embarrassed. And I thought, gosh, did he feel that too. And as I let him out the door it was quite awkward."
She recalls that it was about a week later that she received Robert's message asking if she would leave to marry him.
"I was a little bit shocked. I wore a veil so he never even saw my hair colour. He knew nothing about me really, nothing about my upbringing.
He didn't even know my worldly name," she recalls.
Before entering the Carmelite order - an ancient order of the Roman Catholic church - at the age of 19, Sister Mary Elizabeth had been...READ MORE
