Nuns' convent is old motel with pool

Barry University's "Villa" has everything the nuns need, but it isn't a typical facility.

MIAMI - When the Dominican nuns at Barry University moved into their new convent, it lacked a chapel, rectory and community room - but it did have a swimming pool, diving board and plenty of palm trees.

It also had plenty of room for God's faithful and, unlike most convents, the former Town and Country Motel had a kicky nickname, "the Villa."

"That Villa has had an interesting history," chuckles 85-year-old Sister Mary Arnold Benedetto, who was among the first to move in when the university purchased the motel in 1955, 15 years after the Roman Catholic school's founding. "If that Villa could talk."

It might tell stories of the sisters' poolside parties, rowdy evening card games or the time they decided to throw their keys in a canal because they never locked their doors - a janitor was later sent to fish them out.

The Villa is a little quieter these days, with roughly 24 nuns living there, many retired from teaching jobs at the school. But a small group of younger nuns from Africa have brought young blood and laughter to this holy hotel.

Barry, which has 7,000 students, first used the motel as a dormitory, but later turned it into a convent so the nuns could live together instead of spread out in the campus dormitories.

"They call us the Villa nuns," Benedetto says. "Sometimes they say the Villains."

But the sisters, who don't wear habits and favor pants and T-shirts, say their community has a peaceful reverence.

The beige U-shaped building is covered in palm trees and tropical plants, not a cross in sight. A small statue of the Virgin Mary stands in the front courtyard. Many of the roughly 30 rooms have individual kitchenettes and small front porches.

Life at the Villa doesn't hold the same staid schedule of most convents. The sisters are left to their own routines. Most attend chapel and prayer services on Barry's campus.

Only eight sisters fit in the tiny chapel converted from part of the motel's old lobby. It's retractable doors open to a big-screen TV and a half dozen velour recliners in the community room. They don't eat together, like at most convents, because the dining room isn't big enough.

The sisters themselves are as different as the building from a traditional convent.

Benedetto and Sister Dorothy Jehle, who are graying and now walk with canes, grew up in more traditional American religious life, while Sister Emmy Choge, 44, a Kenyan, lived in an African convent with no electricity. She and the three other African sisters struggled to learn conversational English and South Florida culture. But the barriers have not divided them.

"It's not African sisters and them, but we felt the unity so close to us," says Sister Veronica Rop, who came from Kenya and is finishing her master's degree in counseling and theology.

Rop cleans the apartments of a few older nuns. She and the other African sisters have also taught them songs and dances in their native Swahili and Kalenjin.

In turn, the sisters taught them to swim.

"I remember it was Easter and I was swimming from one end to one end and I did it. I said, 'I am not going to sink,'" said Rop.

Everyone knows the Villa nuns on campus, says assistant vice president for mission and ministry Sister Arlene Scott. "They're like the living heritage of the place."

[Last modified December 9, 2007, 22:52:17]