Cruise-ship tourists crowding souvenir shops and couples chasing the perfect Instagram sunset throng the alleyway outside the Monastery of St Catherine, steps from Santorini's world-famous volcanic cliffs.
"In such a touristy island, the last thing one thinks about is praying — so we are the ones who do it," Sister Lucía María de Fátima, the prioress, said on a recent morning. A woman poses for a photograph outside the wrought-iron enclosure of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Catholic Church. "For these women, they find God in a dedicated life of prayer or contemplation," said Margaret McGuinness, professor emerita of religion at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
During two daily recesses, they break their silence to chat on the wide terraces, the Aegean Sea shimmering in the distance. "Despite being cloistered, nuns have always been an important element in the life of a place," said Fermín Labarga, professor of church history at the University of Navarra in Spain.
They came to Santorini mostly from the Caribbean , as well as Angola, Korea, Argentina, Greece and Spain. After an earthquake, it was relocated to the main town of Thira a few miles away, where it survived another devastating quake in 1956 that led many residents, including most other Catholics, to abandon the island.
I wish them well.
That'll fix it, talking to some imaginary being that has done nothing to help for millenia