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Left to right: Sister Anna Marie Vanni, OCD; Mother Dolores Sullivan, OCD; Sister Teresa Francis Wilkins, OCD; and Sister Mary Anne Biata, OCD, pictured Oct. 9 on the grounds of Mother of God Monastery. The monastery, opened in 1965 by Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken, is closing March 1 after 55 years. (Photo by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco).
Oct. 19, 2020
Christina GrayCatholic San Francisco
The 400 redwood trees shading the grounds of Mother of God Monastery will still reach for the heavens long after the cloistered nuns who planted them move off the 45-acre property next spring.
In an emailed letter sent to over 3,000 supporters on Aug. 31, Carmelite Sister Anna Marie Vanni announced the San Rafael monastery will close March 1, 2021. After 55 years the monastery is an apparent casualty of dwindling vocation numbers, the letter suggested.
“We are only four sisters now. We have been exploring the possibility of joining another monastery of Carmelites,” wrote Sister Vanni, the monastery’s last prioress. “Please pray for us during this period of transition.”
The sisters were informed in May after a decree of closure was issued to the archdiocese by the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, she told Catholic San Francisco. At ages 59-98, they are now looking for a new home together in another Carmelite monastery, or if necessary, apart in several, she said.
Prayer has always powered the rambling, suburban monastery built by Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken for 10 Carmelite nuns who moved from Carmel on Nov. 24, 1965.
A life of prayer is the witness of the great Carmelite saints, according to the order’s website: “When facing a ‘dark night of the soul,’ St. John of the Cross will tell you to keep praying. When daunted by the heavy lifting that true self-understanding entails, St. Teresa of Avila will tell you to keep praying. When vexed by the everyday foibles of the people around you, St. Therese of Lisieux will tell you to keep praying.”
The sisters pray together in early morning prayer, mid-morning prayer, Mass, midday prayer, office of readings, vespers and final prayer. Individual time is allotted for private prayer and study too.
Private intentions come to the sisters from all around the world.
Since the beginning, the monastery has been self-supporting, its life of prayer sustained through a variety of cottage industries — such as its popular annual homemade jam sale — and the generous devotion of supporters such as the Friends of Carmel, the Mater Dei Guild and the Angel Prayer Club, said Sister Vanni.
The sisters and their friends raised about $150,000 a year to meet expenses, she said, 10% of that paid in stipends to the rotation of about 25 priests from five counties who offered Mass in the packed (pre-COVID-19) monastery chapel.
“But when you get down to five black veils, five professed sisters, you really have to look at your vitality,” she said. The native of nearby Fairfax has spent her entire 43-year Carmelite vocation at the multi-room monastery.
It was Sister Vanni who planted each of the young redwoods decades ago that have since grown into a lush grove valued by an arborist recently in millions of dollars. But their true value is perhaps best measured during a contemplative morning walk.
Catholic San Francisco came to the monastery for the last time on Oct. 9 to talk to the sisters — at times misty-eyed above their masks — as they expressed their years-long attempt to “revitalize” to save the monastery and failing that, their trust in God for whatever lies ahead.
“It’s more sadness I feel, not fear, because I know the Lord will look after us,” said England-born Sister Teresa Francis Wilkins, OCD. Sister Wilkins, 82, has been a Carmelite for 64 years, the last 15 of those years in San Rafael.
The oldest is Mother Dolores Sullivan, OCD, 98, last surviving member of the founding sisters and former prioress. Bright and inquiring, she in a fashion still rules the roost from behind her wheeled walker. The youngest in age and time at the monastery is Sister Mary Anne Biata, OCD, 59, a French-speaking native of the Congo who was the last new sister the community welcomed seven years ago.
The complications of moving the sisters — all technically seniors — into new group housing during a pandemic helped extend out the sister’s moving date until spring of the new year, Sister Vanni said.
“But at this moment we don’t know where we will live,” she said.
Joining another Carmelite monastery somewhere in the U.S. is the goal, said Sister Vanni, but easier said than done. Contemplative communities are “running scared,” she said.
“They don’t want to take a lot of older sisters in because they might not be seen as being ‘vital’ and will have to close too,” she said. It is more likely the sisters will be split into pairs.
“There is a real big sadness,” Sister Vanni said of the reaction of supporters to news of the monastery’s closure.
“To have cloistered sisters is a rare gift in today’s world,” Father Cyril O’Sullivan, pastor of nearby St. Isabella Parish told Catholic San Francisco. “They are a jewel here in Marin County and I totally support them and believe in them.”
The monastery has been “greatly blessed” by a rotation of local priests including Father O’Sullivan who have come to celebrate Mass at the monastery’s small, often-packed (in pre-COVID times) chapel. Priests and bishops from five different dioceses, in fact, traveled to the monastery to do the same.
Theresa Mahoney of Cloverdale told Catholic San Francisco that the sisters have been a spiritual constant in the lives of she and her family for more than 40 years.
“Their prayerful support got me through college at a late age, my first home, relationship upsets, deaths in the family, just to mention a few things,” she said. “They are the only church that my three brothers and I recognize.”
Claire Miller, now in assisted living at Nazareth House in San Rafael, attended daily Mass at the monastery after moving to Terra Linda in 1996.
“The love of God and peace and grace that enveloped me there was a source of strength that I needed to rededicate my daily life to the mother of God.”
Michael Mello of San Rafael, a college friend of Sister Vanni, said the sisters have “helped me and countless other people traverse both the joys and the sorrows of life.”
He recalled the homily of the late Archbishop John R. Quinn describing the sisters’ contemplative life during a visit as a "sign and signal" of the life to which all the faithful should strive.
Mother Dolores put it this way:
“We are the eyes and ears and hands and feet of the church,” she said. “I think we are here to show God to the ordinary person.”