Behind 20ft high walls, the Poor Clares of York rise at five, live in silence, eat a vegetarian diet, and tend their glorious six-acre garden. But on a table just outside their chapel sits a new arrival that has transformed their lives. The nuns call it Goldie; and the plastic T-shaped object delivers the 21st century to this medieval world.
For Goldie is a piece of electronic equipment designed by Interaction Design Studio at Goldsmiths, University of London, and headlines from the outside world scroll across the top: on the day of my visit, "Two German aid workers kidnapped in Sudan; Yorkshire soldier killed in Helmand; EU condemns Darfur ambush". When the Poor Clares see the messages, they pray for the people they read about.
It took months of negotiation for the Goldsmiths team to persuade the nuns to try out the technology. They have always prayed for the outside world, receiving requests for help by post, phone and very recently email via one solitary computer. But Goldie, with its rolling headlines, has made the nine nuns very contemporary contemplatives.
"It is not there because we're desperate for news," says Sister Paul, one of the Poor Clares. "We are here for prayer, for channelling people's needs to God."
The device has changed its designers too. "I tend towards scientific scepticism and think prayer doesn't have an impact," says project co-ordinator Bill Gaver. "But there is also a spirituality about me, which thinks it does. This is not a dispassionate thing. We're certainly not humouring the nuns."
Catherine Pepinster is editor of the Tablet
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