CIA contents page | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | Family Names | H
APPENDIX G.
THE CARMELITES OF GUATEMALA.
There existed in the Republic of Guatemala a community of Carmelite nuns of whom one, Mother Adelaide, was an American. On the 24th of February, 1874, they were ordered by President Barrios, then head of the Republic, to quit their convent. The nuns protested that they yielded only to force. The officials would not allow them to make use of the carriages their friends had sent to them, but crowded them into a cart, and drove them to the convent of St. Catherine where five different communities, 130 nuns in all, were huddled together. The President then sent orders to the Abbess to take down the grating and the turn and to allow all to enter the convent who desired to do so. This would be enough to make savages blush, but acts of violence of which Hottentots would be ashamed, seem nothing to apostates. The ecclesiastical authorities protested, and threatened all with excommunication who would dare to enter the enclosure. The next morning an order was issued, by which every nun was to leave the convent by six o'clock under pain of being shot without mercy. Shame on President Barrios and all like him!
The outcast nuns found hospitality among many of the citizens. After the storm had somewhat subsided, they hired a house and lived together a short time, but the affair was discovered. Fearing arrest they went to the ecclesiastical governor and requested permission to accompany the Archbishop to Cuba. Through the influence of the American Consul, the Superior and four of the nuns were allowed to leave the country. Before they embarked, their baggage was examined.
They arrived at Cuba in 1875. On this island they all caught the yellow fever, to which one succumbed. They remained at the Carmelite convent at Havana until July, 1877, when they left for Savannah, Georgia, where they arrived on August 30th, 1877. There they received two novices, Sisters Maria Josefa and Maria Bernardina. They left Savannah for Yonkers, N. Y., September 24th, 1879, and reached there on the 29th of the same month.
Having been invited by the Bishop of Leon, Spain, to establish their community in his diocese, the Sisters sailed from New York on May 22nd, 1881, and landed at Cadiz on the 5th of the following month. Thence they proceeded by rail to Madrid, where the Bishop of Leon met them in person, and conducted them to their future home. The Archbishop of Guatemala had made all arrangements with the Bishop of Leon for sending on their
427
428 Appendixes.
money, a sum of $40,000, the gift of a pious lady. Relying upon these funds, they purchased a ruined convent at Grajal, a village on the railroad between Palencia, Leon and Valladolid, and rebuilt it according to their wants. When all the contracts had been made and sealed, and the work begun, the Archbishop of Guatemala died suddenly of apoplexy, and the lawyer to whom the affair had been entrusted absconded with all their money, capital and interest, thus leaving the poor nuns in want in a strange country.
God, however, who is never trusted in vain, did not abandon them. They were able to support themselves by the alms received and by the work of their hands, making candles for the altar, flowers and other articles. They now have a canonical foundation with twenty members, and are moreover out of debt.
CIA contents page | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | Family Names | H