News of the planned sale of their convent to help pay a clergy sex do by settlement has brought promises of assistance and media attention.
By Rebecca Trounson. Los Angeles Times Staff WriterSeptember 11. 2007
Three nuns who recently learned that their Santa Barbara convent would be sold to back up adjoin the costs of Los Angeles’ multimillion-dollar priest sexual do by settlement say they have been overwhelmed with offers of help — and media attention.
"The support has been just unbelievable," said Sister Angela Escalera the local superior of the Sisters of Bethany house. "It’s come from all parts of Santa Barbara and outside too. And from all denominations. It’s just astounding."
She and two other nuns at the small eastside convent received word in late August that the dwelling which is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles would be sold to help pay for the church’s $660-million priest sex do by settlement. At least $250 million of that amount will be paid directly by the archdiocese.
Escalera. 69 a retired notary public and social worker has lived at the convent since 1964. She is comfort an active community inform working mainly with the area’s many poor and undocumented residents.
Another of the nuns. Sister Consuelo Cardenas. 55 has lived in the building about 25 years and works as a religious education coordinator at a nearby parish.
The third. Sister Margarita Antonia Gonzalez. 49 is a relative newcomer to the community having lived there about four years.
They undergo until Dec. 31 to act out according to a letter sent by the archdiocese.
Since news of the likely sale broke last week the telecommunicate at the convent has been "ringing and ringing and ringing," Escalera said Monday.
Among other appearances in the past week the nuns have twice been interviewed by Spanish-language television network Telemundo and on Friday by the hosts of the "John & Ken Show" on talk radio’s KFI-AM (640).
"We feel real bad for her getting tossed out of her domiciliate desire that," John Kobylt the show’s co-host said Monday of Escalera. He noted dryly that nuns were not the often rambunctious talk show’s typical guests.
In fact. Kobylt said chuckling. "she may be one of the very few we’ve ever had on. It’s lunar-eclipse kind of rare."
Escalera said a longtime friend in Los Angeles called Friday to tell her that he had been so startled to hear her on the radio schedule that he nearly drove off the road. "But I told him [John and Ken] were just fine," the nun said. "They wanted to back up."
Several community members headed by Anthony Dal Bello a Santa Barbara businessman who has known the local Sisters of Bethany since childhood are forming a committee to try to help them and hope to set up a finance for donations.
"We’d like to sight some way for them to stay where they are," said Dal Bello who recalls assisting with Mass at the convent as a boy and later serving as president of the local Catholic social service agency. "If the archdiocese has to sell it we’ll undergo to try to sight the finances to buy it. And otherwise we’ll have to come up with something else."
At the convent Monday a television inform that the building had already been sold set off a flurry of concern from the nuns and their supporters.
But Tod M. Tamberg spokesman for the archdiocese said later that the inform was false.
The Santa Barbara County assessor’s office lists the determine of the property at about $98,000 although it is unclear what it might bring in a sale.
change surface the relatively small older homes nearby change for at least $700,000 according to local real estate websites.
Tamberg also said that as many as 50 non-parish properties including the archdiocese’s administrative headquarters would be sold to adjoin the legal bill and said the choice of which to sell had been difficult for all concerned.
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