Deep in the mountains of southern Arizona, not far from the wine country of Sonoita, there is a place that’s home to a small group of Catholic nuns.
Santa Rita Abbey is a picturesque place in the high desert — but, the sisters who live a cloistered life here are facing a serious challenge: time. The nuns are aging and fewer and fewer women are entering religious life.
In today’s world, why would they? At least that was the central question for producer and director Victoria Westover. Her first documentary film focuses on Santa Rita Abbey. It’s called “Final Vows” and is being shown at film festivals now. It's set to be released on streaming in January.
Westover spent more than four years documenting the sisters' lives at the abbey trying to answer that question. But, she wasn’t a stranger to Catholicism. She was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school— but today, she said you might call her a lapsed Catholic, like so many others. But Westover said she always had a fascination with nuns.
Full conversation
VICTORIA WESTOVER: You know, I was a teenager in the, in the ‘70s when Gloria Steinem was telling me I could be anything I wanted to be. And I had a classmate who wanted to be a nun. I just didn't understand.
And so I think I've always wondered and like, when I started this film, I was sort of coming in from this, I thought a feminist perspective, you know, like why would a woman want to become a nun? But I learned quickly that some nuns actually feel that it is a feminist choice for them to become a nun. And, and it, it sort of did change my perception. I would say that I gained a respect for women who choose to become a nun. Yeah, that I didn't have before.
LAUREN GILGER: So, so talk about the way in which you kind of approached making a film like this, like you were there for four-and-a-half years, you must have really invested in this or become invested in it in the process. But how did you get their permission, their trust to kind of do this, right? Like living a cloistered life, like they don't live public lives?
WESTOVER: No. Yeah, trust is a big issue that you have to establish when you're making any documentary film. But I mean, it's actually kind of funny how it all came about because I knew that cloistered nuns would not be interested in participating. But I had a colleague who was helping at the film and she called down there and they were, much to my surprise, they said, yeah, come on down and talk to us.
I later found out that, you know, a lot of monasteries are using media now to try to help with recruitment. And so they were thinking, they later shared with me that they were thinking, how do we get a film made about ourselves? And then, and then I appeared. So, so their perspective is that we were sent by God to make the film. But you know, that was not what was happening on my end.
But it was all kind of funny because I had been a producer for a number of years of documentaries, but I've never directed a film and I, one day I was just, I want to make it, I want to direct the film myself. So when I showed up, you know, I said I've never directed a film and I'm not Catholic and no one on the crew is Catholic and we will need to be in your personal and private spaces and we need to film you for years. So, so what do you say?
I mean, just an absolutely terrible pitch. But they decided to, to pun intended, take a leap of faith and they invited us to start it. But I honestly, I would say it probably took two years of that film before the relationship really changed and became one of mutual trust.
GILGER: Wow. So, they felt like you were sent by God. Wow. So, tell us, about, about the Santa Rita Abbey. Like, what is life like there? What do we mean when we say cloistered?
WESTOVER: Well, I mean, it's beautiful. It's, they live very much right in nature. You know, they look out their windows and they see the mountains on both sides. And one of the things, you know, as soon as we get out of the car, each time we go and visit, the thing that just strikes you immediately is the, the quiet and, you know, my cellphone doesn't work and I just love it.
But the thing that surprises me is, you know, you think that they're just quietly sitting in an abbey and praying all day. It's actually not the case. They are phenomenally busy. They have a very scheduled day, and they're constantly working. They have to support themselves. You know, I thought that they would get money from the church, but that's not the case. They, they're more like a little commune.
So they have to have their own business to provide income. So they manufacture for them, they manufacture the hosts that priests use at mass. And so they have this whole building, it's for doing that and they brought in an oven from France and everything, everything's mechanized. They do that. And then so, so it's constantly cutting, baking, packaging, mailing, shipping.
GILGER: Those little wafers that, like, anyone who's been to a Catholic church knows.
WESTOVER: Exactly. And then they're praying five times a day, praying and singing in the chapel. And then they maintain the facility, you know, they're constantly cleaning and they're constantly cooking. And so it's really, it's really a lot of activity and, and then, you know, they also are studying and reading. So, I mean, it's a, it's a busy life.
GILGER: It's a busy life after all. So why, why do they do it? Like, what is the point to them of, of living this sort of cloistered life, this, this life that is very separate from the world and very much centered on community, right?
WESTOVER: Yes. Well, my understanding, what I came to understand is that they want a deeper relationship with God. So they need to, you know, not, not really isolated. I mean, there's much more contact than I even imagined. And, you know, every abbess at an abbey gets to determine the level of cloistered. So there was one abbey during my research phase that I talked to in Virginia and they were like, no, we're behind the grill. You can't come in, you know, you know, it was still like medieval times.
But Santa Rita Abbey is not like that. At the end of the film with their jubilee celebration, 50 years of existing, there were like 100 people that showed up that they all knew, you know. So, so, you know, so it's not like, they're not intending to close themselves off from the world. As a matter of fact, they know a lot about what's going on in the world. That also surprised me.
They have a whole table in their library that's full of magazines and newspapers. And they know exactly what's happening in politics and, you know, war and everything. So they are well informed. So they're not separated themselves from the world, but they want this close relationship with God.
GILGER: I want to talk about one of the things that became, it sounds like a real central message of the film, right? Which is that they're like so many other communities, they're dwindling. Their numbers are dwindling, right? You had the deaths of three of those nuns just this summer, right.
WESTOVER: Exactly. And there's another one now that's in nursing care. So this was the reason they wanted to have a film made about themselves. Recruitment is really big on their minds right now, how concerned they are with the lack of more nuns joining them.
GILGER: And, and in their old age living in this small community of them, they're taking care of each other, right? Like they are serving one another in this real kind of intimate way, it sounds like.
WESTOVER: Yes, I mean, we were able to catch some of that intimacy, I think on camera, you know, we like to say that the film is, is also a meditation sort of on aging and communal living and how we can care for each other.
GILGER: I want to ask you lastly, Victoria, about, about, I guess what you learned from, from these nuns. Like their lives and the way they live them is so antithetical to everything in today's world, how we live today, right. What do you think we all can learn from them?
WESTOVER: Well, you know, there was one scene we were filming when the bishop was saying, Matt, he said, you know, you are our most countercultural thing that we have or something. And then that like really struck me. I was like, wow, they are countercultural. You know, so, so I always thought that I was accepting of different people's lifestyles and things like that.
But I had this particular issue, I think, around this one. So I am, you know, I, I just have a better understanding of, of why a woman would choose this life. And when you see that these women are so happy about their choice in their life, it was really eye-opening to see that.
