In Women Church World this month, we have not recounted who the nuns are today; we could not have done so. The religious make up three quarters of the Church, and are her backbone, and her soul. They are scattered over the five continents, and perform the most varied functions.

This issue’s objective is somewhat more limited, but nonetheless important. This month, we have highlighted the gap, understood as the contradiction between the reality of women religious and the way they are still widely misperceived throughout the secular world, and the Church. This reality oscillates between a collective imagination made up of literary, historical, cinematic and TV constructs, and the concrete role they play in society. In sum, the contrast between their presence in modernity and the backwardness by which they are still attributed.