|
Nuns’ home in Monastery up for sale
By Aaron Beswick
A 193-year-old monastery in northern Nova Scotia has been put up for sale against the wishes of the local diocese and the nuns who live there. The sale coincides with a lawsuit against the Chicago-based Order of St. Augustine, also known as the Augustinians of the Midwest Province. That group administers a charity called Augustinian Fathers (Ontario) Inc., which claims to own the monastery. The Our Lady of Grace Monastery in the community of Monastery, Antigonish County, has been listed for $895,000. The 361-hectare property includes a 60,000-square-foot, three-storey residence, church, central heating plant, a 15,000-square-foot barn/wood shop, house, gymnasium and five nuns who don’t want to leave. Mother Superior Gloria told The Chronicle Herald that in February the parent order informed her that the monastery would be put up for sale if they didn’t buy it for $790,000. “But we have no money,” said the Mother Superior. The Contemplative Augustinian Nuns have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They pray seven times a day, receive no funding and rely completely on the charity of the community for their sustenance. According to Father Bernard MacAdam, the move by the Chicago office of the Augustinian order is a violation of the agreement that was made with the nuns when they moved to Antigonish 11 years ago. “There was an agreement with the sisters there that they would be there as long as they wished to remain there,” said Father MacAdam. “That agreement appears not to be being honoured.” The Contemplative Augustinian Nuns moved into the Monastery in 2007 from Rome, replacing an order of Maronite monks. At the time, the nuns, most of whom are originally from the Philippines, fell under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Augustinians based in Marylake, Ont. In 2012, the Chicago-based Midwest Augustinians took over administrative and canonical responsibility for the Canadians. The priests of the Diocese of Antigonish have launched a petition calling on the parent order not to sell the monastery. Neither MacAdam nor the Mother Superior were aware of the lawsuit filed against the Midwest Augustinians. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Robert Krankvich on April 17 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill. Krankvich alleges that he was repeatedly sexually assaulted between the ages of 13 and 17 by his then-high school principal, Father Richard McGrath. “The Defendents knew or should have known that they had numerous agents who had sexually molested children,” reads documents filed with the court. Marc Pearlman, one of the two attorneys bringing the lawsuit, told The Chronicle Herald on Thursday that he “would assume there were more victims” but that none have come forward to join the lawsuit yet. Informed of the suit against the parent order, Father MacAdam sighed. “I knew nothing about that and that may be the reason they are trying to come up with funds,” said MacAdam. “. . . So this monastery is probably collateral damage. This is the age in which we live, I guess.” The Diocese of Antigonish itself recently sold off properties to pay for a $15-million settlement reached in 2009 with victims of sexual abuse at the hands of its clergy dating back to the 1950s.
While Augustinian Fathers (Ontario) Inc. claims to own the monastery, provincial property records are not so clear. In 1938, a German group of Augustinian monks took over the monastery. They established a model farm, a retreat house and a recovery house for alcoholics. By the year 2000, the remaining monks were becoming too old to maintain the property, so they moved to a house belonging to the order in Marylake, Ont. They were replaced by the monks of St. Macron, who also lead lives of silence and prayer. According to provincial property records, those monks signed a reversionary clause with an organization called St. Augustine’s Monastery stating that if the order ceased to function as a facility then ownership would revert back to the latter. According to a quit-claim deed filed in 2007, that reversionary clause was enacted and the property reverted back to “St. Augustine’s Monastery, a body corporate, incorporated pursuant to the laws of the Province of Nova Scotia and located at Monastery, County of Antigonish.” But no such organization comes up as ever having existed on the province’s Registry of Joint Stocks. Property records list St. Augustine’s Monastery as having an address of P.O. Box 550, Marylake, King City, Ont. That post office box belongs to Augustinian Fathers (Ontario) Inc. Listed on the shrine’s contact information is Rev. Bernard Scianna, prior provincial of the Midwest Augustinians and the Province of St. Joseph (Canada). The Chronicle Herald was not able to reach Rev. Scianna for comment on Wednesday. The Midwest Augustinians are listed as one of the defendants in the lawsuit filed by Krankvich. On Thursday night, the Chronicle Herald was contacted by Quinto Annibale, secretary for the Augustinian Fathers (Ontario) Inc. She said that her organization, a charity registered in Ontario, owns the monastery and is responsible for its sale. That group lists both Scianna and McGrath, the accused in Krankvich’s lawsuit, on its board of directors. The property is listed by Keller Williams Select Realty of Halifax. The Realtor responsible for it, Tom Gerard, could not be reached by The Chronicle Herald on Thursday. Meanwhile, Mother Superior Gloria and her four sisters in Monastery will continue their quiet life of praying for the world until they are told to leave. “We depend on divine providence,” she said.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.