Nuns can stay in Manoa convent

Two dozen retired St. Francis nuns can remain in their Manoa convent for the foreseeable future, following an announcement Tuesday by leaders of the New York-based religious order that it no longer plans to close the convent and relocate the sisters to Pearl City.

“After listening to the sisters and in the spirit of prayer, leadership has reconsidered our original decision,” the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, based in Syracuse, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to residents at the convent.

The letter says the nuns will be allowed to stay at the convent — adjacent to Saint Francis School — until a planned assisted-living facility being built by St. Francis Healthcare System is completed in Liliha. The order is redeveloping the site of its former hospital into a one-stop health and wellness campus called Kupuna Village.

The Sisters of St. Francis had announced earlier this month that the retired nuns would be relocated in March to the Plaza Assisted Living facility in Pearl City because the order believed the convent was too large for the number of residents served. It had planned to rent rooms on one floor of the Plaza and then relocate the sisters to Liliha when that complex is completed.

“Our original proposal to move the sisters to the Plaza was made with love, concern and the best interest of our Hawaii sisters,” the letter from New York said. “We based that decision on input from the various committees, our congregational strategic and sustainability plan, the needs of the aging and infirm sisters, the maintenance and upkeep of the regional convent, and the ongoing financial cost.”

The sisters — retired nurses and teachers mostly in their late 70s to early 90s — were not happy about having to leave their longtime home, and their situation drew an outpouring of support from Saint Francis School alumni and community members, who held rallies, circulated petitions, wrote letters to the order and even appealed to Pope Francis.

Some of the retired nuns have been living on the campus since 1932, when the original convent was a wooden building. The four-story, hollow-tile building constructed in the 1960s houses private rooms, an infirmary, a chapel, a dining room and a library.

Sister Joan of Arc Souza, who has lived at the convent for the past 36 years and serves as head of Saint Francis School, said the Kupuna Village build-out in Liliha is expected to take 18 to 24 months. She said residents were elated with Tuesday’s news, which she received by email at about 11 a.m. Tuesday. “We’re ecstatic,” Souza said.

A number of the sisters broke out in song in the convent’s dining room to celebrate the news, and clinked their mugs of water.

“We just received the best Christmas present we could ever have,” said Sister Samuel Marie Sattar, 68, who worked at the former leprosy colony at Kalaupapa. “It’s just a happy, happy, joyous day. This is our home and where we need to be until we have to move — not twice.”

“I’m very happy we’re staying,” said 88-year-old Sister Jeanette Joaquin, who hoped to celebrate later with coffee ice cream. “I just couldn’t see moving from this home, and I couldn’t see being in Pearl City.”

Sister Helen Agnes Ignacio, 86, said she was “ready to put gloves on” to fight the original decision. “It’s time to jump for joy,” Ignacio said, seated in her motorized scooter.

Several Saint Francis School alumnae joined the sisters at the convent after hearing that the decision was reversed.

“I got a call saying, ‘The sisters can stay! The sisters can stay!’ And I said, ‘Oh, we did it! We did it!’” said Carol Caspillo, president of the Saint Francis Alumni Association, which rallied in support of the nuns and collected thousands of signatures on a petition. “We had a campaign like no other. … We did letters to the bishop, letters to the pope; we did letters to 4,000-plus alumni and friends; and evidently it did the job. New York just got overpowered with it, and so it worked. So now we have to go and thank everyone.”

Phyllis Leimomi Stephenson, the alumni association’s first vice president, caught a ride to Manoa from the Kaneohe retirement community where she lives immediately after hearing the news. “When I got the call, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “My lunch is still sitting in my room.”