Carmelite nun recalls 70 years in Utah

IC photo/Marie Mischel

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Carmelite Sister Maureen of the Trinity (left) and Sister Margaret Mary of the Sacred Heart are the two remaining founders of the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Salt Lake City.

INTERMOUNTAIN CATHOLIC — Sister Margaret Mary of the Sacred Heart has lived in the cloister of a Carmelite monastery since she was 18. Now, as her 95th birthday approaches this month, she looks back on a life of prayer that included coming from a convent in Alhambra, Calif. in 1952 to found the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Salt Lake City.

When she heard that the convent in Alhambra was planning to found a new convent, Sr. Margaret Mary asked to go. She was thrilled to learn that the convent would be in Utah, because in high school she had read many books about the Wild West, and she thought living here would be dramatic, she said. “I’m still, to this day, thrilled to be in Utah, in this place here. It’s just where I want to be.”

The nuns were welcomed by the Most Rev. Duane G. Hunt, fifth Bishop of Salt Lake.

“It was very courageous for [Bishop Hunt] to take us, because you have to remember that ... we don’t do any exterior help in the diocese, in the sense that we don’t teach and don’t do nursing or anything, and we are dependent on charity in a lot of ways, we certainly are,” Sr. Margaret Mary said.

She and Sister Maureen of the Trinity are the two remaining of the Utah monastery’s original five nuns, who arrived by train about 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1952.

“It was one of the slowest trains you ever saw in your life. It stopped at every single milk station between here and Los Angles, so it took us all night to come from Los Angeles to here,” Sr. Margaret Mary said.

They first settled in a house in downtown Salt Lake City; five years later they moved to their current location in Holladay. At the time the area was farmland; she recalls occasionally looking out the window to see a neighbor’s livestock wandering through their yard.

Bishop Hunt was concerned that the nuns wouldn’t have enough to eat, so he asked each of the nine parishes in the area to provide them with groceries once a month. One year, during the three months when no parish was assigned, a man came to the door and told the nuns he had an agreement with a grocery store to take all their excess as food for his pigs. However, there was more than he could use, the man said, and he offered to give some to the nuns.

“It was wonderful things, perfectly new, fresh and everything else,” Sr. Margaret Mary said. “Well, you know, that was like a walking miracle in a sense because for three months he came and … brought us all this great stuff.”

Strangely, when parishes started again with their donations, “we never heard from [the man] again,” she said.

These days, the nuns receive donations from various individuals and parishes, and their annual fair is a significant fundraiser.

“After all these years I still can’t get over how generous people are to us,” Sr. Margaret Mary said. “Every single day with all my heart and soul I pray for all our benefactors. … They have kept us going here in Utah, and we are grateful. So grateful. … I’m sure all the nuns feel the same way.”

The nuns dedicate themselves to prayer, particularly for priests and the people of Utah but also for the world. Sr. Margaret Mary acknowledged that hers has been a sacrificial way of living, “but the fact that you run to the Lord and you know that he loves you and he consoles you once in a while – it’s worth it a thousand times,” she said.