It was a lovely tea, with cake. There is no better company than nuns and the five Sisters of Nazareth who were entertaining me in their Hammersmith mother house were both engaging and kind.

It was a lovely tea, with cake. There is no better company than nuns and the five Sisters of Nazareth who were entertaining me in their Hammersmith mother house were both engaging and kind. But eventually the superior, Sr Brenda, said casually that I must be wondering why I had been invited. It was, it seemed, no mere social encounter; there was a purpose. The founder of the order, Victoire Larmenier, a Breton who came to London in 1851 as a Little Sister of the Poor with four other sisters, all without a word of English, hasn’t been canonised, and the nuns want that put right.

Larmenier, later Mother St Basil, confronted by the poverty of the London of the Great Exhibition, responded in the way that made the Church of the nineteenth century so effective as an instrument of social as well as spiritual reform; at the age of 24, she set up a new community, with the support of Cardinal Wiseman, to help the poor, especially children. “Our first resident was not a Catholic”, one nun explained. “They were all denominations. The first child she took in was a boy, and then there was Margaret Chambers, a Protestant.” And what was special about Victoire? All five sisters spoke at once: “She had a great feeling for the poor.”

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