Tyburn Nuns purchase Foundress's house in France

Tyburn nuns outside the house at Grancey

The Tyburn Nuns have bought the house in France where their foundress, Mother Marie-Adèle Garnier, was born in 1838. The purchase of the property in Grancey-le-Château, a Burgundy town in the Archdiocese of Dijon, was completed just months after the Cause for the Canonisation of Mother Marie-Adèle was opened.

The nuns, whose Mother House in London is sited yards from the site of the execution of more than 100 Catholic martyrs of the Protestant Reformation, intend to install a chapel inside the house and to turn the property into a centre for pilgrimage as the Cause of their foundress progresses toward sainthood. The nuns also intend to found a museum and information centre dedicated to the life of Mother Marie-Adèle at the site and to convert a large part of the house for use as a small conference and retreat centre for day groups and some overnight guests.

The Cause of Mother Marie-Adèle was opened on 3 December 2016 by Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat of Langres, France, at a ceremony in the Convent of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, a monastery of the Tyburn Nuns within his diocese at St Loup-sur-Aujon, just 20 miles from Grancey.

The first contract for the purchase of the house, which had been previously used as a police station and most recently as a tourist information office, was signed on 8 March. Soon afterwards, the house was bought outright by the nuns for an undisclosed sum thanks to benefactors from all over the world who answered an appeal for help. They included villagers from poor areas of Peru.

The nuns still require funds for the renovation work and are actively seeking church pews and other furnishings. The nuns hope to have the house ready to open to the public by autumn 2017 at the earliest following renovation work and the installation of the chapel. At present, the house has six self-contained apartments and a large ground floor room which was previously the tourist office but which will be converted into the chapel.

Their intentions for the property have been welcomed by Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon.

"I cannot but encourage you in this project of acquisition of the house and of the construction of a chapel," Archbishop Minnerath said in a letter to Mother Marilla Aw, the Australian-born Mother General of the Tyburn Nuns. "The diocese of Dijon rejoices at seeing the rise of Grancey-le-Château as a place of pilgrimage where your sisters will radiate the spirituality of the Sacred Heart," he said. "We are also rejoicing at the opening of the Cause of Beatification of Marie-Adèle Garnier. May the Lord bless your apostolate."

Website for Tyburn Convent: www.tyburnconvent.org.uk