Monique Hepburn, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE ROMAN Catholic Franciscan Sisters, who currently offer health and educational services to several schools in Montego Bay, will be ending their 80-year association with the western city this August, Bishop of Montego Bay Charles Dufour has announced.
Bishop Dufour was quick to point out, however, that the nuns, who are originally from upstate New York and have been ministering on the island for 126 years, will not be quitting Jamaica altogether, saying it was only after "much prayer and discernment that the painful decision to cease operating in Montego Bay was made."
STILL BE ACTIVE
"They (the Franciscan Sisters) will still be very active in the Archdiocese of Kingston, where they have worked mainly in the field of education and inner-city community development. The order has also been deeply involved in retreat and prayer ministry in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mandeville," he noted.
Currently, only three nuns remain out of the original contingent of 42, and they will be leaving Montego Bay at the end of their assignment, which ends in August.
The Mt. Alvernia Preparatory and High schools, the two primary institutions served by the nuns, will continue to be Roman Catholic institutions but will now be managed, by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Montego Bay.
CLASH OF FAITHS
However, while Bishop Dufour made no mention of religious tension at the school brought on by a clashing of various faiths, a well-placed source, familiar with the activities of the Franciscan nuns, told The Gleaner that doctrinal differences between the nuns and the teachers, especially the Seventh-day Adventists were "making a harmonious accommodation difficult."
According to the source: "Over a period of time there has been an influx of Adventist teachers at the schools and we all know that there are clear doctrinal differences between the Roman Catholics and the Adventists. There is a view that this is the cause for decrease in women coming into the Church. Roman Catholics, however, cannot do anything because they will lose government funding."
LONG ASSOCIATION
However, in speaking to the reduction in the number of nuns serving in Montego Bay, Bishop Dufour said theinability to recruit new nuns was also reflected in the decline of new recruits to the congregation.
"This was prompted by the lack of sister personnel to replace those who have died or retired, and the absence of new recruits to the congregation," said Bishop Dufour.
The nuns began their long association with Jamaica as far back as 1879, 20 years after the order was founded in the little village of Allegany in the Northwestern section of New York State.
The first of five Allegany Sisters arrived in Kingston in 1879 on a banana boat, and the Montego Bay mission was established 46 years later, after the nuns acceded to a request from then Roman Catholic Bishop of Jamaica, J.J. Collins.
In August 1925, the group of nuns opened the Mount Alvernia Convent and Academy for Girls, at Prospect Hill, in Montego Bay.
The last three nuns remaining in residence at the Mt. Alvernia Convent are Sister Angella Harris, principal of the Mount Alvernia High School, Sister Ann Martin Robonic, who assists with the Chetwood Memorial Primary, and Sister William Margaret Young founder of the diocese's Hope Health Teaching Clinic.
Sister Young is also an executive assistant to the diocese's Good Shepherd Foundation Charity and medical centre.
