Bethlehem’s sisters found a new community in the Diocese of Huelva

The sisters of Bethlehem have founded a new community in the Diocese of Huelva (Spain), after they had to leave last year the monastery of the Cartuja of Santa María de la Defenpiones in the Diocese of Asidonia-Jerez.

At the end of 2023, the Monastic Family of Bethlehem, of the Assumption of the Virgin and San Bruno announced their departure from the Jerez diocese throughout 2024, understanding that there were no “favorable conditions for their charism of silence, loneliness and hidden life”.

Although alternatives were sought within the diocese, in the end it was not possible and in the month of March 2024, more than two decades of silent presence were ended since the monks are lacted in the year 2000.

A year after leaving Jerez, the sisters of Bethlehem have announced that they have just been installed in the district of Marigenta, dependent on Zalamea la Real, in the Diocese of Huelva, where they are going to found a new monastery under the invocation of Our Lady of the Goodness of God.

“Now we arrive at Huelva to offer our people and our lives, to bring your intentions and raise to God an praise in this small corner of the earth that welcomes us,” they have expressed In a video in which they announce this new foundation.

The Bishop of Huelva, Mons. Santiago Gómez Sierra, encouraged the faithful of his diocese “to welcome these sisters” and to sustain their arrival “with our prayer, with our friendship and also help with everything we can put, the resources of each one.”

“We are willing to do everything possible so that this new monastery between us is a beautiful reality,” he added.

In addition to the help of numerous volunteers who have collaborated to transfer the belongings of the religious from Jerez to Huelva, activities are being organized for the benefit of the nuns, as a concert in charge of the Coral de la Salle de Huelva.

The nuns will be installed provisionally in prefabricated cells that have a bed, a desk and a space for prayer.

The volunteers have built the chapel of the new foundation on the farm that has donated the marriage formed by Fernando Torres and Immaculate Flores. “Everything they sowed in Jerez will be able to collect in Huelva. It will be a blessing, ”they emphasize.

The new community is formed by four sisters from different monasteries, which since the beginning of the year have gathered at their mother home, the monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Desert, in the Diocese of Grenoble (France).

There they have known and have begun to form the ties of the new community, while they have received training for the management of the monastery both in the spiritual, as the logistics, economic and material.

“We have had the grace to receive the experience and testimony of our older sisters who preceded us in the adventure of the foundations in other monasteries. How much we have played to what extent this foundation is accompanied by our brothers and sisters of Bethlehem. What support and what strength this communion gives us! ” They express in the video.

Sister Laure-Marie, Priora General of the Sisters of Bethlehem said that “the birth of this small monastery in the Diocese of Huelva is, for our whole monastic family in this Jubilee year, a great sign of hope.”