Even if Cameron did recognise the value of religious orders, he would still need to contend with the matter of secular opposition to religious service providers, whatever their experience. In recent years, that has manifested itself in the issue of Catholic adoption agencies who were unwilling to place children with gay couples, and was highlighted only last month by the furore over the possibility of pro-life counselling for women seeking abortions. In the case of Catholic adoption agencies losing government support, Sister Gemma says: "It is absolutely frightening what has happened there. We had a consistently high success rate with finding homes for difficult-to-place children, yet because of the gay adoption issue, all our good work, all that wealth of experience, has been disregarded. It was a tragedy that we couldn't negotiate with the government."

I ask Sister Gemma how she thinks nuns and secular health providers could collaborate when it comes to abortion. 

"The Pope has written very clearly about how you give care and support to people who have had abortions. No Catholic religious group would want to be inveigled into a position that supported or promoted abortion. But we have been supporting vulnerable women for decades, in an aftercare and counselling capacity, not by discussing what they choose to do, but by helping them afterwards to come to terms with their decision."

Nuns have a history of being remarkably tenacious, never needing outside approval to do what they believe is God's will. "We don't care about what the media thinks of us," says Sister Anastasia. "Unless of course that is feeding back into government policy."