Moving out of the Sisters of the Visitation Monastery of Philadelphia was a faith-filled experience as well as a painful goodbye for Sister Catherine Therese, VHM.

“It was more than just a building,” Sister Catherine said. “So much of our lives are spent in the monastery and on the grounds, almost completely, our whole lives. To celebrate the last mass and put out the sanctuary light and dismantle everything, it was hard.”

The monastery sits on an 11.6 acre property on City Avenue between Hawk Hill’s Wolfington Welcome Center and the Morris Quad Townhouses. St. Joe’s purchased the property for $15 million June 27, according to the deed records from the Philadelphia Department of Records. For 83 years, it had been home to the Sisters of the Visitation of Philadelphia, a group of cloistered nuns who have limited contact with the outside world and spend their days dedicated to prayer, faith and community with each other and with God.

The property provides the Hawk Hill campus with a “contiguous frontage along City Avenue,” wrote Kevin Mueller, MBA ’22, senior director of construction and planning, in response to written questions from The Hawk.

“Right now, it is undecided how the university will use this newly-acquired parcel of land,” Mueller wrote. “However, we are considering a direct pedestrian corridor from the center of the Hawk Hill campus to the residence halls of Moore Hall, the Morris Townhouses and Ashwood Hall.”

The Visitation Monastery of Philadelphia is part of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, which was founded in 1610 by St. Jane Frances de Chantal and St. Francis de Sales in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France. The Order eventually spread throughout Europe and North America.

The sisters have resided in Philadelphia for 97 years and have history across the United States. Sisters from Alabama founded a monastery in Mexico City, but in 1926, both American and Mexican sisters from the Mexico City monastery were forced to flee to the U.S. due to religious persecution. They made their way to Camac Street in Philadelphia later that year, and moved to the location on City Avenue in 1940. Over the years, the sisters added areas to the main house, including a chapel in 1958 and an infirmary a few years later.

St. Joe’s was a clear choice of buyer due to its “long-standing relationship” with the sisters, Mueller wrote. Last year, the sisters hosted their annual Novena of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a nine-day period of prayer in devotion to Jesus’ Sacred Heart, in St. Joe’s chapel on the Hawk Hill campus. The university will carry on the sisters’ novena this June, wrote Dan Joyce ’88, S.J., in response to written questions from The Hawk.

Sister Catherine, who has lived at the Philadelphia monastery since she entered religious life in 1983, said it was “pure agony” to pack up and leave behind the love and familiarity of her home. However, she also viewed it as a message from God that to leave good things behind does not mean good things will stop coming.

“I thought for sure I would die of grief and they were going to bury me on this property and that’s it, I’m never going to leave 5820 City Ave. I was sure that was going to be my end,” Sister Catherine said. “But look, it’s already a few months and I’m still alive. It’s telling me to keep a deep trust in the Lord and to take one day at a time and look at the present moment.”

The closure of the monastery and sale of the property did not come as a surprise to the sisters or to Joyce, who has long been close with the sisters and has studied their spirituality.

“Having known the sisters for many years, there was always a conversation about their moving to one of their other monasteries in the U.S.,” Joyce wrote. “Their numbers have been declining over the last 30 years.”

The Sisters of the Visitation have faced a lack of vocations, meaning little to no women are exploring their faith and seeking to become new sisters of the monastery. Only five sisters remained at the monastery at the time of its closing, and they have since spread to other Visitation Monasteries across the country, choosing where they believe they can best serve the Lord.

Sister Catherine is now at the Visitation Monastery in Tyringham, Massachusetts. Though she is still getting used to calling this new monastery home, she expressed her gratitude both towards the sisters for welcoming her and towards God for leading her there.

“They are a joyful group of sisters. I’m very blessed to be at a beautiful monastery so conducive to a life of prayer and silence,” Sister Catherine said. “There’s beautiful mountains in the Berkshires that just raise one’s mind and heart to God, and I can’t praise God enough for these beautiful mountains that I get to enjoy every day.”

Some items still remain at the Philadelphia monastery in the sisters’ absence, like a Sacred Heart statue which bears significant dates for the history of the Philadelphia monastery, and the eight buildings which housed the sisters and their daily activities.

But other things, like a shrine to Our Lady Guadalupe and even the flowers of the monastery garden, have taken a similar path to the sisters themselves, spreading out to serve new communities.

“I would’ve taken every single flower in that garden, in that whole 11 acres, if I could,” Sister Catherine said. “But I had to let so much go, leave it in God’s hands, trust that everything belongs to Him and that everything is for His glory. Now, they’re blooming in other people’s gardens, and it’s wonderful.”