HIGH SPRINGS, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — Sister Loretta-Maria has a big vision: build from scratch a Carmelite monastery for 13 nuns, a chapel for the Traditional Latin Mass, and grow a self-sustaining garden and orchard.
She has 10 acres of land and a rough sketch of architectural plans. Nuns and hopeful postulants have already made inquiries.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider has even blessed the project. She just needs the funds to make it happen.
The monastery would enable what the world needs perhaps more than anything else today: traditional nuns living out a life of prayer and penance for “the Bishops and priests of the Universal Church, and the world,” as Sister Loretta-Maria has explained.
This Carmelite apostolate is urgently important as “the world is in despair for its future” and it “is harder today than it ever was in the history of the world to be a good, practicing Catholic, and much more so a good priest or bishop,” Sr. Loretta-Maria noted.
“Prayer is necessary to strengthen and to embolden all the priests, the bishops throughout the world, and the Pope every single day,” she added.
Fidelity to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and the traditional teaching of the Church gives greater glory to God, procures more graces for souls, including priests, and strengthens nuns in their Carmelite vocation. This is key to the new monastery, as is union with the Roman Catholic Church, as Sr. Loretta-Maria explains on her “About Us” page:
We remain ever faithful to the traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and all traditional sacraments, teachings, discipline, dogma, and doctrine passed on to us by the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We observe and recognize the legitimacy and supremacy of the Pope and the Office of the Papacy from apostolic times to the current pontificate.
As Sr. Loretta-Maria’s personal experience has shown, however, in these times, autonomy is needed in order to maintain fidelity to traditional Catholic teaching and liturgy, and even to preserve an authentically Carmelite religious way of life.
The founding nun previously lived in a now-suppressed Carmelite monastery in Savannah, Georgia, founded in 1958. In 2023, the Vatican shut down the monastery after claiming that the community did not meet the requirements of its 2018 instruction Cor Orans, which revolutionized women’s contemplative life. The directive centralized religious communities under “federations,” thereby undercutting their individuality and their own charisms.
Cor Orans cites “the number of nuns” as among the reasons a contemplative religious community may be suppressed. As of the time it was forced to close, the Carmelite monastery in Georgia had three fully professed nuns and two novices. The oldest sisters, including the Mother Superior, were both reportedly told to “find a nursing home” to move to without any direction or assistance from either the order or the diocese.
Thus, Sr. Loretta-Maria’s planned Traditional Carmelite Monastery will be “under the autonomy of the traditional Discalced Carmelite Order founded (by) Saint Teresa of Avila,” and will “seek this autonomy by remaining a non-diocesan private, independent institution while retaining the profession of perpetual solemn vows of the Carmelite Order.”
Project updates
Sr. Loretta-Maria has consulted with architects who have drafted a classic “quadrangle” monastery design in which the nun’s cloister is arranged around a courtyard. The design is headed by a chapel with a main high altar as well as two side altars for daily Latin Mass open to the public.
The nun told LifeSiteNews she is also planning to grow vegetable gardens and a fruit orchard to sustain the nuns as well as raise chickens, keep bee hives, and “perhaps a cow and goat” on the 10-acre property.
So far, she has cleared and fenced the 10 acres of land and is tracking each completed and upcoming phase of the monastery project on her website. All are welcome to subscribe for monthly updates at the bottom-right portion of the website.
Sr. Loretta-Maria is currently in dialogue with a few nuns living as hermits as well as a handful of young women along with women with belated vocations who have all expressed great interest in joining the monastery once it is built.
The nun continues to sell handmade rosaries, crochet Carmelite Nun dolls, scapulars, and more handmade crafts on her online shop. She has also started an online raffle ticket event where participants may purchase a $10 online ticket for a chance to win one of three prizes: a handmade quilt, a collection of books donated by Ave Maria Press, and a handmade rosary. Once all 100 tickets are sold, the winners will be chosen for each prize.
Online donations can continue to be made to the monastery building project through Zeffy or PayPal.
The address for mailed-in donations is:
Habit Forming Sisters Corporation
PO Box 564
Richmond Hill, GA 31324
Habit Forming Sisters Corporation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so all donations are tax-deductible, and donors can request a tax letter through the website’s contact page.