A first: monastery for the Anglican ordinariate to be founded on January 1

Details from the Catholic Herald in the U.K.: 

The first monastery of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will be founded on New Year’s Day, it was announced today.

On January 1 2014 the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary will formally become the first autonomous monastery within the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton.

Ten Sisters, formerly members of the Anglican Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, will profess their solemn vows at a Mass in the convent in Birmingham where they have been living since August 2013. Mgr Newton will preside.

The Sisters were received into the full communion of the Catholic Church on New Year’s Day 2013. During the initial stages of their life in the Catholic Church, the Sisters have existed as a Public Association of the Faithful, following the Benedictine spiritual tradition and wearing the traditional wimple of the Benedictine order.

This new step – approved by the Holy See – establishes them formally as a stable religious community and gives them the chance to re-affirm their religious vows for the first time publicly, within the Catholic communion. At some future date, the monastery may seek to associate itself with a particular Benedictine family.

Read it all.