NEWPORT – Some say they will remember the beautiful landscape and the views. Some will remember teaching children at the school. Others will remember taking their first vows there.
But there's little doubt that all will remember with great fondness their time spent at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny Convent in Newport.
Situated on a quiet road abutting a marsh, the house has been home to the Cluny sisters since 1953. About ten of the sisters who attended a prayer service on September 26 at the Convent remembered back to those first years.
Sr. Rose Roffelson entered the convent on October 3, 1953 and lived in Newport until 1986. During the first years there, she remembered, "we had to learn the ropes of religious life." Like many of the sisters, she taught at the Cluny school. History and music were her subjects. "I'm very fond of the time in Newport," she said.
Sr. Bernadette Lapre was one of the first women to enter the Cluny convent in Newport. "It was like a dormitory then," she recalled as she described the two large rooms in which all of the women were housed. Lapre entered the convent with Sr. Regina Brunell. She said she would miss the peaceful setting of the Newport home. "Some of my most important memories are coming home after doing ministry elsewhere to the tranquility; I felt renewed" she said. But, she added, it is time to "leave the old behind."
Sr. Aine Power, who came to Newport from a convent in California in the 1970s, relished the relaxed atmosphere the Newport convent offered. Her classes were much smaller than they had been in California and "it was like a vacation when I got home," she said. "We used to ride bicycles around to the Ocean Drive. I love the views."
The house has a large back yard overlooking the water that has been left, for the most part, to nature. Trees and flowers grow naturally over the hills that slope down to the marsh. A small guest house surrounded by trees sits adjacent to the larger house. Power recalled that while she lived in the house she and the other sisters used to "sit and say our prayers out there. It was beautiful."
At the prayer service the sisters were nostalgic. They discussed their lives as Cluny sisters within the house and outside of it. Their ministries have taken them across the state and even into Canada and France, but many feel moored by the Newport house.
Only three sisters lived in the house when the sale was announced. The rest had already moved on, and those remaining sisters were already set to move to a new residence in Middletown. They had previously informed the Diocese of their plans to move due to rising maintenance costs and other factors. At the time of the prayer service much of the contents of the house were already in boxes awaiting the move.
"We're sad to leave the memories but it was never our property; it was a wise decision," said Sr. Anne-Marie Liston.
