Bishop Olson: New Texas Carmel is a ‘fresh start’

"Without looking back at all, we’re looking forward."

Six Carmelite nuns will begin a new monastery in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, this month, more than one year after the Vatican-ordered suppression of a controversial Carmelite monastery, which had been embroiled in a years-long scandal including allegations of sexual misconduct, drug abuse, and schism.

Fort Worth’s Bishop Michael Olson told The Pillar Tuesday that the new Carmelite monastery is a “fresh start” in his diocese, and that he is grateful to have nuns there who are dedicated to prayer for the spiritual needs of local Catholics.

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In a Dec. 2 statement released by the Fort Worth diocese, Olson announced “with profound joy and gratitude to God” that the Vatican had “granted permission for the establishment of a Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Northern Cooke County, Texas, in the Diocese of Fort Worth.”

Calling the news “a moment of extraordinary grace for our local Church,” Olson explained that the new Carmelite monastery, “the Carmel of Jesus Crucified, will be a place where the beauty of contemplative life radiates outward into the world. Through prayer, silence, work, and sacrifice, the Discalced Carmelite nuns will accompany the faithful and intercede for the needs of our communities.”

In a phone call with The Pillar soon after the announcement, the bishop explained that the six nuns will come from Carmelite monasteries connected to the Christ the King Association of Discalced Carmelite Monasteries — a federation of Carmelite monasteries across the country. Along with those nuns are expected to come two women in formation for religious life, he said.

Olson told The Pillar the monastery will begin its life in Texas with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, scheduled for December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, at a temporary monastery location.

After the Mass, the nuns have work to do.

Initially, they will be housed in a temporary location in Cooke County, Texas, and “they have a permanent site that hopefully they’ll be able to build on in the coming year,” Olson explained.

Initial funding for the new monastery has come from Catholics “within the diocese,” Olson added. “The faithful have responded very warmly to the whole thing. People have been generous.”

“So it’s really just a new start,” Olson told The Pillar. “A fresh start. Without looking back at all, we’re looking forward.”

While the bishop says he is not looking back, the bizarre saga of a now suppressed Carmelite monastery in his diocese attracted national headlines in recent years, before its November 2024 suppression by the Vatican.

Controversy between the Diocese of Fort Worth and the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity began in April 2023, when Bishop Olson launched a canonical investigation into the alleged conduct of Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, who had allegedly admitted to violating her vow of chastity with an initially unnamed priest.

Lawyers for the community and for Gerlach, both civil and canonical, said that her supposed admission of an affair was made following a serious medical procedure, under the influence of painkillers, and when she was in and out of lucidity.

But the issue escalated, coming to involve a million-dollar lawsuit filed by the nuns against Olson, followed by images released by the Fort Worth diocese purporting to show tables inside the monastery strewn with large amounts of drug paraphernalia, and then Vatican involvement, supporting Olson and ordering new leadership for the monastery.

Five solemnly professed nuns and a novice were dismissed by the Vatican from the monastery last October, on charges they had “defected from the faith” — a charge which could be construed as the canonical crime of schism, which carries with it the penalty of excommunication.

But despite the penal sanction of dismissal, the nuns were not reportedly declared excommunicated, and there have been no publicly published documents to that effect.

Soon after their dismissal, the women rejected the Vatican’s judgment in a statement, and said they did not accept they had been rejected from religious life.

“The Vows we have professed to God cannot be dismissed or taken away. By virtue of them we belong to Him and are His,” the nuns wrote, adding that “we continue our vowed life of prayer and sacrifice in the Discalced Carmelite tradition for the Church and the world, and for all of you, our dear friends and benefactors, including those who may disagree or disapprove of the decisions we have had to make in the best interests of our Community.”

The Carmelites garnered the support of the now-excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Vigano, and had Mass celebrated illicitly by two priests without faculties, both from the Scranton, Pennsylvania diocese, one of whom was was accused of child sexual abuse and in 2012 prohibited from presenting himself as a priest or engaging in priestly ministry in the Fort Worth diocese.

The former nuns also claimed last year to associate themselves with the Society of St. Pius X, a de facto traditionalist association of priests which has been described as having “imperfect communion” with the Apostolic See.

The women said they had re-elected their former superior, Mother Teresa Agnes of Jesus Crucified Gerlach, O.C.D, in defiance of the Vatican’s appointment of a nun from another monastery as the Arlington Carmelites’ superior.

The former nuns said they had conducted that election with “supplied jurisdiction” from the SSPX — referencing a claimed argument which has been rejected by the Vatican, that priests of the association have “supplied jurisdiction from the law” for sacramental and pastoral ministry because “personal jurisdiction is unjustly refused to them simply because of their attachment to the Faith and its traditional expression.”

In November 2024, the Vatican declared that the Carmelite monastery had been suppressed because it was “extinct” — meaning that it had no members, given the dismissal of the monastery’s former nuns.

It is not clear how many women are presently in residence at the former monastery, though after the former nuns were dismissed last year, they reportedly remained in residence, refusing to turn over the property.

Canon law governing the suppression of extinct monasteries, established in the Vatican’s Cor orans, would seem to indicate that the monastery property would devolve to the Carmelite Association of Christ the King, the federation of Carmelite monasteries to which the former Carmel had belonged.

But before they were dismissed from religious life, the Texas nuns transferred the civil title to their property to a non-profit foundation made up of the community’s benefactors and supporters, including the president of Gonzaga University, who is the brother of one former nun.

While the move would be regarded as an invalid alienation by canon law, it was seemingly intended to distance the property from canonical oversight, and to ensure that the former nuns could make use of their monastery regardless of the Vatican’s decision about their future.

Nonprofit records indicated last year that the board of the non-profit was headed by the nuns’ attorney, Matthew Bobo, and the nonprofit’s headquarters shared a legal address with his law office.

Bobo has long argued that Olson’s investigation into the monastery was motivated by a desire to see the diocese seize the nun’s real estate — while the diocese has said consistently, including in its Monday statement, that it has no designs on the property, previously calling Bobo’s claims “false and unfounded.”

Sources have told The Pillar in recent months that it is not likely any ecclesiastical institution will seek to claim the property from the former nuns.

Olson’s remarks Tuesday suggest that he intends to focus efforts on aiding the newly established monastery, rather than continue to engage with the former one.

As he is “looking forward,” Bishop Olson told The Pillar Tuesday that he had been eager to see a new monastery established in Fort Worth “for spiritual reasons: the salvation of souls and the spiritual good of our people,” especially through the prayers of the cloistered nuns for the Fort Worth diocese and its Catholics.

While an announcement of the Carmel was public, Olson emphasized that much of the apostolic life of the Carmelite nuns will be largely unseen — focusing on cloistered contemplative prayer within their monastery, especially as “the nuns are very serious about their enclosure,” he said, emphasizing the spiritual fruits of cloistered religious life.

“It’s a very hidden life, in a good sense of the word,” he said. “Hidden, but not secretive. And so we’re very blessed.”

Olson said that he was especially grateful “to the Holy Father” — Pope Leo XIV — “for his trust and generosity, along with the Association of Christ the King and its president Mother Marie of the Incarnation, who is responsible for this foundation,” he added.

Of the association, Olson said that “my respect and gratitude for their religious life has really grown a great deal through this, for all of those Carmels and their fidelity to their call.”

But while he expressed gratitude for collaborators and Vatican support for the new monastery, Olson said that his diocese should be grateful to heavenly intercession for the establishment of a newly formed Carmelite presence in their midst.

“Really, the Blessed Mother — it’s her,” the bishop said. “It’s her and the Little Flower, they did it all. I mean that sincerely, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Thérèse.”