Cloistered Carmelite nuns in North Buffalo monastery leave for Florida

The 14 nuns who had lived a sequestered life in North Buffalo packed up their meager belongings last week and boarded a bus heading south to Jacksonville.

The move marked the first time in more than a century that the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Buffalo were not in the area offering contemplative prayers on behalf of the local Catholic faithful.

The group of cloistered nuns had lived since the 1920s inside a large monastery on Carmel Road. They announced in October in a letter on their website that they were relocating to the Diocese of St. Augustine in northern Florida.

The letter noted that what was once a quiet area on the outskirts of the city no longer offered “the silence and solitude which are requisite for a cloistered Community.”

The members of cloistered orders commit to living within what’s known as a papal enclosure, set off from the rest of the world and praying in almost complete privacy.

The Carmelite nuns were to take up residence in an 8,400-square-foot home on a 14-acre lot in a gated community in Jacksonville.

They wrote in November that they hoped to sell the Carmel Road property to a buyer that will preserve the chapel as “a place where people can come to pray and to be reminded of the Carmelites’ ongoing prayers for everyone here.”

An effort is underway by the Friends of the Carmelite Nuns of the Diocese of St. Augustine, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, to raise $5 million to acquire a “well-protected home in a rural-like environment” and provide ongoing support for the sisters, according to a post at the Queen of Angels Catholic Store website in Jacksonville.

The nonprofit was founded last June by Catherine and William Hensley, who live in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The Hensleys did not respond to voicemail messages.

The two-story monastery measures an estimated 50,000 square feet and has an assessed value of $1.2 million,…