Hospital patients don't have to think twice to figure out who Sister Lucie Thai is when she walks down a corridor or into their rooms at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Riverside.

She's one of only a handful of Catholic nuns in Northeast Florida who still wear a habit or veil. Thai said she's stuck with the head wear because of the message it instantly communicates to hospital patients and staff she counsels as a chaplain.

"They don't have to find out who I am," she said. "They don't have to worry, and they can just trust in me."

The responses she gets are almost universal: "They say they are really pleased to see a sister with a habit, because some sisters don't wear it."

Experts who follow these things say there's no way to know how many nuns continue to wear the iconic habit or even veils and modified veils. But they say the numbers are small - just like the dwindling population of nuns itself.

The fact is, sisters - known also in Catholicism as women religious - have abandoned the habit, much as Catholic women have abandoned the religious life since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Also known as Vatican II, it urged orders to re-evaluate their missions and their dress, and simultaneously opened positions traditionally held by nuns - teachers, principals, charity workers - to the laity.

Although experts see a growing interest in women's orders that champion veils and flowing robes, they also notice the numbers expressing interest in the religious life overall is puny compared to the heyday in the 19th through the mid-20th centuries.

"Many are asking, 'Why do I need to be a sister?' " said Kathleen Cummings, acting director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame.

Seeking community

For some, the answer is the bond with other women who share a calling from God to serve in ministry, said Sister Maureen Kelly, the bishop's delegate for religious in the Jacksonville-based Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine.

Those who express interest "say what they are looking for these days is community," Kelly said. "They want to have a group of women who they identify with, to be able to pray and live together and study."

Diocesan spokeswoman Kathleen Bagg said 111 sisters from 13 orders are serving in the 17-county diocese. Most are from organizations headquartered in other states or nations. One group, the Sisters of St. Joseph, has its mother house in St. Augustine.

The numbers are down from about 135 in 1992, Kelly said, adding that she currently has three or four women in some stage of discerning whether to pursue the religious life.

An ongoing trend is that orders are seeking - and hearing from - women who have sometimes worked a career or two and possibly even raised children before divorcing or becoming widowed, Cummings said.

"Today there are all different kinds of opportunities" for professional women who enter the religious life, Kelly said.

'Interesting missions'

Sisters' job descriptions have widened during the past three or four decades. Once focused largely on jobs in parishes and church-run schools, nuns can be found in non-profit, professional and secular settings across the community, said Camille "Sissy" Horn, director of development at Sisters of St. Joseph.

"They're working at some of the parishes, and they're still in schools," Horn said. "But we've got some sisters working in some other interesting missions as well."

One is an architect who designs churches for Catholic and Protestant congregations. Another operates a stained glass studio. Others run the diocese's archives, and a number are social workers, Horn said.

Cummings said this widened professional focus developed as the numbers of sisters has declined from around 180,000 in 1965 to just under 60,000 in 2009. It's also dictated by the median age of today's nuns, with is above 70.

Orders "prefer they come to them with more life experience and job skills because the retirement systems that functioned so well for centuries ... no longer work because it's so top-heavy in terms of age."

Making a comeback?

But there are also hints the future could lead to the past for nuns in Florida and across the nation.

A growing number of women are inquiring about those orders whose members still wear the habit, Kelly said.

"I think they are actually attracted to something they can see and identify with," she said.

Cummings said that's holding up nationally, as well. The emerging trend conforms to other tradition-embracing movements in Catholicism, such as an expanding desire to return to the Latin Mass.

Others in the Church desire nuns return to more traditional jobs within the institution, she said.

"People want ... a sense of what it means to be Catholic, and for some it's the visible signs," she said. " 'If I wear a habit, that means I'm a nun.' "

Still, Cummings added, nationally the most any order is reporting is 10 newcomers a year, which is "miniscule" compared to decades ago.

Also, it remains to be seen how many of those seeking the habit will remain five or 10 years after joining those orders.

"It's just too soon to tell" if this points to a reversal of the downward trend in numbers, she said.

'Work needs to be done'

But St. Joseph Sister Elise Kennedy isn't worried.

She became a nun in the early 1960s, just when the Vatican council was advising nuns to return to the principles of their founders. For many, that meant abandoning traditional garb in order to blend in with the people they serve.

She wore one for a while and eventually stopped. She said it comes up in conversation quite a bit about donning them again.

But what to wear or where to work aren't sources of stress or worry, because God will guide them through whatever changes are ahead, said Kennedy, the principal at St. Pius V Catholic School on the Northside.

"There may be fewer in number, but there is always the work of the church that needs to be done," she said. "When sisters figure out where the cutting edge is, that's where we'll go."

jeff.brumley@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4310