Fearing that the cherished Hollywood residence of cloistered Dominican sisters will be sold for private use or redevelopment, Los Angeles preservationists and campaigners have formed a charity to buy and manage the Monastery of the Angels.
The community has dwindled over time as the sisters have aged and several have died of COVID-19 and other illnesses, making it harder to maintain the monastery’s “democratic way of life.” The Dominican nuns have dedicated their lives to studying the Bible and praying for people who seek advice and penance from them.
Last year, an online petition to “Save the Monastery of the Angels” was launched, with people of Los Angeles describing the four-acre site as a “retreat” and a “oasis” among the city’s clamor. As of Wednesday, it has received over 4,200 signatures (May 18).
In December, local prioress Sister Maria Christine, head of the Association of North American Dominican Monasteries, said the Dominicans were “looking at numerous possibilities and trying to find the most suited answer,” adding that no decision had been made to sell. Another alternative was to look for other religious groups that could run the monastery.
“In order to proceed, we continue to await formal canonical approvals.” “Our objective is to maintain the property’s beauty while also continuing to be a source of spiritual development for everyone who come to pray,” she said in an email to Religion News Service on Friday.
“The world needs prayer,” she said, “and we keep everyone in our prayers.”
Preservationists, on the other hand, aren’t taking any risks.
The Monastery of the Angels Foundation of Los Angeles, which is in the process of forming, wants to buy the monastery and care for it “as a Catholic holy place,” according to the Save The Monastery Of The Angels website, which went online on Thursday.
According to the website, “losing the monastery to non-Catholic redevelopment would both deprive Catholics in Los Angeles of the capacity to derive spiritual sustenance from its grounds as well as remove a place of prayer from a community that desperately needs it.”
Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, LA historians and preservationists who run a tour company that explores the city through an architectural, historical, and spiritual lens; Rob Hollman, a nonprofit consultant whose clients include PBS SoCal, Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, and Preserve Orange County; and Brody Hale, president of the St. Stephen Protomartyr Project, an organization that works to preserve historic Catholic churches and sacred spaces, are all behind the effort.
Schave said, “We need to be proactive.”
Schave said he agrees with Sister Maria Christine that the monastery should remain a place of spiritual enrichment, but “I do not think we will accomplish that aim if we simply let things go and put our confidence in the Dominican Federation and the Holy See,” he added.
According to Cooper, that area of town has been targeted by foreign investors who “don’t really have a feeling of community.”
“They basically want to profit by doing as much as they can as rapidly as they can,” Cooper added.
The Monastery of the Angels, founded in 1924 by a New Jersey nun, has garnered financial backing from affluent LA families and celebrities, including the Dohenys’ Carrie Estelle Doheny Foundation and the late actress Jane Wyman’s Jane Wyman Charitable Foundation. At the gift store, the nuns also produce and sell their famed pumpkin bread, peanut brittle, chocolate mints, and other goodies.
The initiative’s supporters are planning a fundraising drive addressed to Catholics and others in the neighborhood as well as around the country. They’ll figure out if it’s profitable to keep making pumpkin bread and other baked items.
“Any proceeds from the sale of these items will be used entirely towards the maintenance and upkeep of the monastery and its surroundings,” they said.
They’ll also try to save the gift store and look at the potential of renting out the monastery for retreats.
Despite the fact that the monastery will no longer be inhabited by Dominican sisters, the organization plans to keep the chapel available for occasional Masses, sacramental events, 24-hour Eucharistic adoration, and private prayer. There would be volunteers on hand.
The convent seems to be home to fewer than five nuns.
Other ordinary Catholics have assumed ownership and responsibility for churches and monasteries around the nation, and the organization is patterning its efforts after them.
The Save Our St. Anne’s organization, for example, has been maintaining St. Anne’s Church in Columbia, California, for many years. The parish is part of the Diocese of Stockton, and Mass is held there a couple of times a year.
Since its closure in 2013, the St. Mary’s of the Rock Preservation Society in Batesville, Indiana, has been caring for St. Mary’s of the Rock Church. The parish is located under the Archdiocese of Indianapolis’ jurisdiction.
“Those who wanted St. Mary’s to remain a church open for infrequent masses came up and, at their own cost, took on the task of caring for it and its grounds,” the organization claimed.