Quest Takes Santa Barbara Nuns From Cloister to City Hall

For half a century, since they arrived at the Monastery of the Poor Clares as naive young women, the two nuns have lived sheltered lives as part of the Catholic Church’s most austere order--cloistered inside a walled compound near the old Santa Barbara Mission.

Like the 13 other nuns with whom they share their days, Sister Mary Grace and Mother Mary Clare go barefoot and seldom speak, instead spending seven hours a day in meditation--awakened in their spartan cells even at midnight and 4 a.m. for prayers. Their quiet life is free of television and radio. They greet friends and family only from behind a wall-length wire mesh grille, touching their fingers through a small opening near the bottom.

Adhering to a vow of lifelong poverty, chastity and contemplation, the pair rarely leave the monastery. Usually it is for annual trips to the doctor.

But over the last two years, to gain city approval of a project dear to the members of their 13th century order, they have reluctantly left behind their monastic life, repeatedly breaking a pledge of isolation to embark on an unusual public foray.

In a small bit of irony, the sisters left their monastery to help ensure that they and fellow nuns will be allowed to remain there forever.

The nuns have set aside their oath of silence to speak at countless public hearings as they achieved city approval to build a 52-crypt mausoleum on the monastery grounds.

Suddenly, both were thrust into the confounding, tedious world of bureaucratic red tape that included more than a dozen public hearings and meetings with city planners, architects and archeologists.

In a time of demanding citizen attitudes and quick-trigger tempers toward City Hall, the two nuns quickly stood out.

“She could charm the birds out of the trees. It’s like she walked out of a different time,” city architect Christine Palmer said of Sister Mary Grace. “At the end of every call or visit, she would bless me. I’ve never been so God-blessed in all my life. In this job, with its consternation and controversy, when you hear God’s name, it’s usually in vain.”

The idea for the mausoleum was suggested in 1996 by a friend of the order. After discussing the matter with monastery residents, Sister Mary Grace was designated by her peers as the reluctant divining rod for the project.

She speaks haltingly of her experiences, her vision and lessons from the outside world on a project that was more complex than she could have imagined. “I didn’t know a thing about this kind of work,” she said. “I thought it would be a simple process. It wasn’t.”

For the sisters, the mausoleum will make possible the goal of visiting the graves of deceased members of their order--women who over decades of close-quartered living became their friends.

Nuns are now buried at the Santa Barbara Mission. “In the past, because of our vow of isolation, when one of us died, the body was carried from the monastery and we stayed home,” said 73-year-old Mother Mary Clare, who as the monastery director leaves the compound more often than its other residents, ages 40 to 85.

Recently, she said, the nuns have been allowed to attend funerals but haven’t been able to visit the graves afterward. “And that’s been an emotional hardship.”

Approval of the mausoleum was anything but automatic. Neighbors complained that they “didn’t want dead bodies buried in their backyard.” Then planners determined that a monastery residence slated for demolition to make way for the mausoleum was designed by noted Santa Barbara architect Lutah Maria Riggs. As a result, the sisters had to relocate the home.

Finally, workers at the mausoleum site uncovered artifacts from a 1790s Chumash Indian village. Excavating the site added further delay and expense.

And that meant more meetings. More reasons to pull Sister Mary Grace from a day divided between seven hourlong prayer sessions and five hours of housework, a life in which she has no possessions.

Sister Mary Grace says the bare-bones life was hard to adjust to. “After a few years, you realize the reality of the living conditions,” she said in her soft voice. “But the Lord enlightens you. Our life is not medieval. We’re not cut off from mankind. We’re right in the world, just not of the world.”

Added Mother Mary Clare, who came to the monastery in 1948: “You miss things, but you don’t pine for them. “Before I came, an uncle asked, ‘Aren’t you going to want to jump those walls?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see.’ ”

For the nuns, the monastery is a refuge, a place Sister Mary Grace was loath to leave, even for a cause she believed in.

“Outside, you get besieged by the music and noise,” said Mother Mary Clare. “The best thing about leaving the monastery is coming home. It’s quiet here.”

For each meeting, architect Ernest Watson picked up the nuns in his late-model BMW and drove them to City Hall. “These are women who are confident of their life’s role,” he said, “and they’re really unimpressed about worldly things, about what’s going on in Santa Barbara or anywhere else.”

Once at City Hall, the planning process often overwhelmed the sisters. “To be cloistered for so long and then to come outside and all these things have changed,” Watson said. “I think they were filled with a bit of wonder over modern life and where government is going, that they would have to account to the city over a project on their own property.”

One tough hearing came when several neighbors criticized the project. “Some of them cried,” Sister Mary Grace recalled. “I felt really sorry that people were distressed over the idea. Really, we didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

With mausoleum construction soon to begin, the nuns of the Poor Clares are counting down their last public appearances.

The sisters say the best part of their adventure was that now people know they exist. “We’re more aware of what’s going on out there than people are of us,” said Mother Mary Clare. “We’re hidden. That’s how we like it.”

Sister Mary Grace says she doesn’t miss much about the outside world.

“I learned that if you want something done, you just have to go out and do it,” she said. “I just hope my public life is finally over.”