Relations in religious house an urgent matter (8)
I believe the answer is:
priority
'an urgent matter' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how they can define each other.
'relations in religious house' is the wordplay.
'relations' becomes 'it' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'religious house' becomes 'priory' (priory can mean a monastery or nunnery).
'it' placed inside 'priory' is 'PRIORITY'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for priority that I've seen before include "Precedence in rank, the right to be first" , "Most urgent matter" , "Right to go before others" , "the most important thing" , "First place" .)