September 26, 2007

Diocesan administrator Monsignor J. Gaston Hebert announced that six of the ten sisters at the Monastery of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge in Hot Springs (Garland County) had been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because of their association with a Canadian group called the Army of Mary, whose founder claimed to be a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary; the sisters are no longer affiliated with the Diocese of Little Rock. The monastery had gotten its start in 1908 when four French-speaking nuns had, at the invitation of Bishop John Baptist Morris, come from Ottawa, Canada, to establish a home for underprivileged girls of the state.