August marks the 50th anniversary of the Carmelite Sisters’ arrival in the ACT – and their farewell, as they are called back to the monastery in Melbourne, reports Catholic Voice.

When Sr Bernadette was a child in Canberra in 1974, she saw the Carmelite Sisters walking along the street.

“I ran and crossed the road and hid,” she says, smiling at the memory. “I thought, oh, I can’t let them see me!”

*Carmelite Sisters Sr Monica (left), Sr Bernadette, Sr Francesca and Sr Paula.PHOTO: Catholic Voice.*

Today, as winter sunshine streams through the Red Hill convent windows, she sits nestled in the warm companionship of Sr Paula, Sr Francesca, and Sr Monica.

“God got me in the end!” she exclaims, and the chapel fills with the gentle laughter of the final four Canberra Carmelite sisters.

The sisters will leave Canberra for Melbourne next month.

“Some of the older sisters need care, and we must go and support the community in different ways,” Sr Paula said.

“But we do feel the human pain of leaving our friends here in Canberra.”

An enclosed order, sisters in the Canberra chapter have had something of a unique experience.

“As Carmelites, we stay within the bounds of the monastery, and our life is dedicated to prayer and penance,” Sr Bernadette said.

“In Canberra, however, we don’t have a sister who is an extern, so we have been more intimately connected with the local people than individual sisters would in Melbourne.”

The Carmelites first came to Canberra at the invitation of the Archbishop to pray for the diocese.

Those prayer requests still come daily, a constant thread of faith and hope weaving through the decades.

Sr Bernadette said even though the sisters would be physically leaving Canberra, the connections made there would continue to touch their hearts.

“The first Carmelites had to leave Mt Carmel, but when they went to the cities, they made that their Carmel, their centre of prayer. That was a big expansion in a sense. It is bigger than we are.

“We are always telling everyone to stay in contact. They have promised to knock on our door in Melbourne as well,” she said.

“Prayer is not confined to a place.”

This article by Veronika Cox was published in Catholic Voice, the publication of the Archdiocese of Canberrra-Goulburn.