A housing shortage led to nuns and college students living together. Now they're teaching each other life lessons — and TikTok
At the Our Lady of Angels convent, it's not always a silent night.
On one side of a residential building are college students, like roommates Kayla Patino and Katela Villasenor. And on the other side? Nuns.
"Most students coming to university don't anticipate living with nuns," said Sister Esther Anderson.
Anderson said that when student housing was in short supply at Neumann University outside Philadelphia, she and her sisters offered a wing of their convent.
Villasenor said living with the nuns is like having a second family.
"They have so many stories," Villasenor said. "Stories for days. funny ones, serious ones, wise words."
Anderson, meanwhile, said she and her fellow nuns are "gaining so much from the presence of the students here."
"I mean, life, energy, interest and topics and activities that we might never have sought out," she added.
Like TikTok, the students said.
The sisters "didn't even know what TikTok was," Patino said.
"They were eager to learn," Villasenor added. "They were like, okay, we can make a TikTok too."
Anderson said she's an Irish dancer, and while she had seen "a few TikToks on Facebook," she had never been part of one.
"I have been doing some limbering up just in the event," she said.
Friends united in a special sister solidarity.