Every now and then, Adrian Dominican Sister Cindy Broderick is haunted by the ghost of the "Material Girl."

The ubiquitous pop icon of the 1980s comes calling whenever Sister Broderick, 28, a campus minister at a suburban Chicago high school, sees a slick advertisement for the latest cool techno gadget marketed right at her generation.

But just when Sister Broderick begins to have second thoughts about her vow of poverty, she remembers living and working with people in the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago. Then she turns to her community for strength.

"When I feel myself starting to slide, I can call on my sisters to call me back to what's important," she said. "A majority of people in the world cannot provide for basic needs. It brings you back to the reality of what matters."

Sister Broderick isn't the only young nun living in a "material world" who needs a little moral support from her sisters every now and then.

Nearly 200 Generation-X and baby-boomer religious sisters 50 years old and younger assembled last July at the Giving Voice national gathering at John Carroll University in Cleveland, where they shared their experiences, challenges and hopes for the future.

Humility of Mary Sister Mary Stanco, 38, said that because there are fewer nuns under 50 in most religious communities today it's important to create a gathering space where younger generations can relate to their peers.

"We in our age group have to look at what impacts us, what we have seen in the world and how we respond to it," she said. "Growing up in the 1980s is different than growing up in the 1930s or 1940s."

Still, the younger nuns were eager to include the voices of their older colleagues. Charity of the Incarnate Word Sister Cathy Vetter, 56, from St. Louis, was one of several nuns over 50 who were invited to share their thoughts and experiences with their younger sisters and give them a little encouragement for the journey.

"If we can engage in conversations, we can bring the wisdom of all the generations," she said. "There's a wisdom of the young. There's a wisdom of the old. We need to hear one another."

That can be more of a challenge when the voices are fewer.

Franciscan Sister of Mary Sherri Coleman, 48, said gathering younger generations of nuns allows women who may feel isolated to share that sense of community with their peers. Nationally, the median age of sisters in active ministry is 69.

"I'm the only one in my congregation under 50," said Sister Coleman, who lives in St. Louis. "We have a different perspective on things."

"It's exciting to be with and around people my own age," added Sacred Heart Sister Kimberly King, 35, a middle-school librarian in New York and the youngest in her community. "It's pretty exciting to see that in the larger picture there are people of my generation who are doing this. It's a sense of hope and a sense of the future."

Young nuns insist they feel this sense of hope despite their shrinking numbers. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University in Washington, reports the number of religious sisters in the United States dropped from 122,159 in 1945 to 79,876 in 2000. Since 1965 there are 54 percent fewer sisters in active ministry.

Still, women religious say they aren't hung up on statistics. Divine Providence Sister Elsa Garcia, 49, vocations director for her congregation in San Antonio, said that historically communities of nuns were small and worked closely with lay people when engaged in ministry rather than in large institutions.

Each generation has faced challenges, Sister Garcia said, whether traveling to new lands or establishing schools and hospitals where there were none. Today, the challenge is doing the work with smaller numbers, she said.

"This is what will kill us or it will give us life," she said. "God did not give this to us so we could sit around saying, 'Poor us.' This is ours to meet."

---CNS