NUNS at a York convent have embraced 21st-century technology to help them pray for the people who need their support.

A small digital device, which brings rolling news headlines to the nuns of Poor Clares at their home in Lawrence Street, has been designed for them by experts at the London art college, Goldsmiths.

Affectionately known by the nuns as Goldie, the T-shaped gadget sits on a table near their chapel, so whenever they pass it they can catch up on the latest news and dedicate their prayers to those most in need.

Sister Paul, one of nine nuns at the convent, said: “There’s nobody else in the world who uses this gadget – it was designed specifically for us.

“It is there all the time for us – and keeps our mind focused. We will know if a bomb has gone off in Afghanistan or if there’s a disaster like a flood.”

Goldie is also linked to an internet site where people post how they are feeling at any particular time of the day, so sentences such as “I feel rejected” flash up on the rolling screen in between the news headlines.

Mother Abbess, Sister Colette, who joined the closed order of nuns as an 18-year-old, said: “We don’t know who these people are, but we pray for them.”

While the nuns do have access to the internet, they do not watch television and only read Catholic newspapers.

Sister Paul said: “Praying is the main thing we do here. It is not an easy life we have. But the hardness is not getting up at 5.30am or eating plain food, it is knowing you have got the responsibility to stand in God’s presence on behalf of everybody else.

“People are always writing to us or phoning us with requests for prayers. Once I found a picture of a soldier near the statue outside with a note from her mother saying ‘my daughter is 18 and has just been sent to Afghanistan’. We had no idea who she was, but we prayed for her, as we pray for them all.”