Rosary Monastery

History Of Rosary Monastery

 

The story of the Rosary Monastery, St. Ann’s, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, begins during the period of the War of Independence in Venezuela, a not very promising environment for a new Monastery. Yet in 1816 the original Monastery was founded in that country.

Ten years later a calamity overtook the Monastery with the religious suppression that lasted for forty-eight years until 1874. Then absolute disaster – the President of the Government ordered the suppression of all convents and religious houses. The nuns (the name for Religious who belong to a Cloistered Contemplative Community) had to leave and while some found refuge among friends, others had nowhere to go.

They were not alone in their plight. Msgr. Guevarra, Archbishop of Caracas, had been banished and found refuge in Trinidad. The nuns appealed to him and he used his good graces to have them allowed come to live in Trinidad, but only until the decree of the President  would be changed.

 On 24 October 1874 the Prioress arrived with three nuns and a postulant and were greeted by two others who had arrived to make the preparations.

Their first abode was the Belmont Orphanage, as it was then called, where the authorities were awaiting the Sisters of the Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena of Etrepagny.

On 15 February 1876 they moved into a wooden house attached to the Calvary Chapel near the present Rosary Church on Park Street, Port of Spain.

On the Feast of St. Dominic the nuns moved into the building attached to the Rosary Church and this became their Monastery. They had been courageous enough to build accommodation for twenty-four nuns but this soon became too small!

So, on April 1, 1930, they moved into their new Monastery at St. Ann’s where they are today. At the time of transferring from Rosary Church, they numbered thirty-three nuns. At that time, St. Ann’s was regarded as “country” but it developed over the years into the residential “mini-city” it now is.

The next, and up to the present, the last notable change took place in 1968 when ten of the nun s returned to Venezuela to open a monastery in Los Teques, outside Caracas.

 The present community is composed entirely of Trinidadians.