Both movies and true stories of long-ago saints paint an image of people who enter the convent or monastery to escape the world, and who are shut away from their loved ones while they undergo spiritual formation.

Sister Janet Mock, a Pittsburgher who serves as executive director of the national Religious Formation Conference, says times have changed. She served from 1983 to 1993 as superior general of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, and has been at the Religious Formation Conference in Silver Spring, Md., since 1997. The conference meets at the Marriott City Center, Uptown, tomorrow through Sunday.

"It is the presence of God in the world and the action of God in the world that attracts people to religious life," she said. So whether they are preparing for a life of service or of prayer, today's focus is on embracing the wider world.

The conference was formed 54 years ago to make sure that all sisters assigned to teach school got their bachelor's degrees. Although its goals broadened and it now includes men's orders, "excellence in religious life has been the thrust ever since," she said.

Most people know that the number of Catholics in U.S. orders plummeted after Vatican II ended in 1965. But the worst is over, she said.

The number of women and men entering is "steady, but small in number," she said. That's more typical of their 1,500-year history than was mid-20th century America, when orders were overwhelmed with applicants, she said.

And while the typical novice sister in the 1980s was about 40, "more young people in their 20s and early 30s are being attracted now," she said.

They want community.

"They've done ministry; they've lived alone. What is attracting them is having their life's desires in concert with other people so that what we can do together is so much bigger than what any one of us can do," she said.

Novices come from more diverse ethnic backgrounds than they once did. Ethnic Vietnamese are a significant contingent, as are those with heritage in India, Polynesia, Africa and Latin America.

That, and the fact that many American religious orders work among immigrants or in other nations, has prompted her organization to make a global focus part of its mission statement.

"What it says is that in the U.S. culture, with all of its privileges, we have a great responsibility to live simply, chastely and obediently in relationship to the world and all of its resources. It calls us to be attentive to human rights and to the disparity of rights throughout the world. It also calls us to ecological responsibility," she said.

Sister Janet, who entered in 1955, believes novices today receive much better spiritual formation than she did. There were nearly 90 young women in formation with her -- easily 10 times the number now.

"With two directors they could not possibly get to know you personally. Now with the numbers being smaller, its much different. The gifts of the individual are nourished and the person is challenged to go beyond what she thinks she -- or he -- is capable of," she said.