The news, coming at the end of a Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Atonement Catholic Church in January, reopened a deep wound.

Three nuns, who’d lived at the parish for about a decade and become a beloved presence there, had been asked to leave by the Archdiocese of San Antonio. Their abrupt departure further corroded the parish’s already strained relationship with Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller.

García-Siller considers it a personnel matter and the archdiocese will not comment on it, spokesman Jordan McMorrough said. In a brief interview, the archbishop said he had been in conversation with the sisters’ religious order, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, to clear the air.

But they won’t be returning to San Antonio, he said.

Longtime parishioner Allison Wiggins and several others characterized it as retaliatory, payback for the congregation’s decision last March to join a relatively new diocese created especially for former Anglicans like them.

“A lot of people were crying,” Wiggins said. “Why would a clergyman do this to three nuns who bring nothing but an uplifting spiritual presence to the world? It’s just because he can.”

Known only by their religious names, Sister Grace Marie, Sister Elizabeth Marie and Sister Mary Peter already were on their way home to their motherhouse in Alabama by the time the parish learned they had been asked to leave. The reaction was immediate.

It seemed like a continuation of “so much harshness” from the archbishop, Wiggins said. Some, like Timothy O’Brien, simply were confused. People were “not understanding why the archbishop is doing these things,” he said. Others took to Twitter to cast blame and express anger.

“How DARE you pick on (the three Poor Clares) or any nuns for that matter,” one Tweet said. “Shame on you, Gustavo.”

García-Siller has been a focus of parishioners’ ire ever since they pulled out of the San Antonio archdiocese last March to join the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter — taking their church, school and other holdings to the Vatican-approved diocese for Anglican Catholics.

It was not an amicable departure.

The parish had been built by Father Christopher Phillips, a married Episcopalian priest ordained in the Catholic Church, and a dozen Episcopalians who left their denomination because of its progressive changes. Other Catholics found the orthodoxy they longed for at Atonement, most evident in its use of the Latin Mass and maintenance of traditions that predate Vatican II church liberalizations.

Headquartered in Houston, the Ordinariate now has more than 40 parishes in the United States and Canada and is led by Bishop Steven J. Lopes, who was appointed by Pope Francis.

When the archbishop removed Phillips from his position as pastor after he initiated plans to join the Ordinariate, parishioners were bewildered, saying the move had been in the works for some time and was no secret. The Vatican approved the transfer and Lopes appointed Father Mark Lewis as pastor — and restored Phillips, now retired, to the parish as pastor emeritus.

Since then, the parish school’s students haven’t been allowed to participate in the archdiocese’s popular CYO sports program. More recently, Atonement had asked that the students, as a group, be allowed to make their first Holy Communion and Confirmation together, under the Ordinariate and its bishop.

The church was notified that students who are members of archdiocesan parishes must receive their sacraments in those home churches. Parents said such permission had been granted in the past.

The dismissal of the nuns, who had been invited to serve in San Antonio by former Archbishop José Gomez, was especially hurtful, parishioners said. By many accounts, the nuns didn’t want to leave.

Poster nuns for recruitment

Cloistered but leading active lives, the sisters in San Antonio combined a traditional deference to church authority with the apparent financial clout of at least one deep-pocketed patron. They had acquired land in the Texas Hill Country to establish the Monastery of St. Michael the Archangel, and work had begun to clear the site for construction.

The Bandera County Appraisal District lists a monastery by that name as owning a 308-acre parcel with a house off Texas 16 between Helotes and Pipe Creek, valued at $1.49 million. What will happen to it is unclear. The sisters, their order’s leadership and its home diocese in Alabama have not responded to repeated requests for comment.

The three had a radio program, “A Good Habit,” on the Guadalupe Radio Network, which they used to raise funds. They made soap, marketing it at Williams-Sonoma, the upscale kitchen retailer.

They were viewed as poster nuns for religious vocation recruitment, wearing traditional habits and living in prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Father Lewis announced their sudden departure Jan. 7, as did Father Phillips on his blog, since removed from the parish website.

“Today we were notified by Mother Dolores Marie, the Superior at the monastery in Hanceville, (Alabama,) that Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, the present archbishop of San Antonio, had made the formal request that the nuns be removed from his archdiocese” and the three were on their way to Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville, the blog post said.

Parishioners were told the nuns were too upset to say goodbye. Church members have undertaken an effort to bring them back and are confident that “Rome will correct this,” Wiggins said.

Whether the Ordinariate will invite the nuns to return to Atonement under its auspices couldn’t be verified. Jenny Faber, its director of communications, did not return calls and emails on the subject.

The “Texas nuns,” as they called themselves, responded to an email by referring questions to their mother superior. Attempts to contact her were unsuccessful.

In an email exchange, a spokeswoman for Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham did not address questions about the nuns’ return to Alabama except to say, “Bishop Baker did not call the Sisters home.”

The only people eager to speak about the continued fallout were parishioners at Atonement.

Tradition vs. mainstream

O’Brien, who has worshiped there for 10 years and has three children at Atonement Academy, said problems were in the air before Atonement left the archdiocese.

“There were rumors coming down we would be excluded from activities and sports,” he said.

When Bishop Lopes visited Atonement in a rousing celebration and took questions, CYO was mentioned as among the changes to expect. But the reality hit hard. Some Atonement athletes reportedly have registered for CYO programs at other parishes but have worn Atonement uniforms during practices.

Parishioner David Hegedusich said the nuns’ departure triggered “a ‘here we-go-again’ feeling.”

“There’s a sense that Archbishop Gustavo still has some resentment toward the parish,” Hegedusich said, acknowledging that the archbishop was acting within his authority. “We’re all wondering, ‘Why?’”

Jenny Halpin, whose three children attend Atonement Academy, said the parish’s work goes on — “It’s an amazing environment. It’s very spiritual,” she said — but “the little things that keep happening to our parish … erode what we have.”

She has applied to join the Ordinariate, in part, because she would like her children to receive their sacraments at Atonement.

The tensions may point back to a divide between Anglican traditionalists in the Catholic Church and mainstream Catholics whose congregations worship in more modern styles. Atonement, for example, doesn’t allow girls to be altar servers nor use vernacular music for worship, both of which are now ubiquitous in Catholic parishes.

Online discussions, covered by anonymity, illustrate even deeper resentments. A letter circulated among parishioners on how to write to the Vatican, advising them to be “respectful in your language about the Archbishop.”

Wiggins, like other parishioners, wrote to Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, appealing for the nuns’ return.

Duane Galles, a Minnesota-based canon lawyer on the board of the St. Joseph’s Foundation, which handles canonical issues, said the tensions aren’t unusual given the complexities involved in such a split.

“The same kind of thing happens when a diocese is divided, and a new diocese is erected,” he said.

Galles said there’s no canonical reason why students from other dioceses can’t participate in another’s sporting program. Atonement points to St. George Maronite Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church, which is allowed to participate in CYO.

McMorrough said

St. George, though under the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles, is “also in communion and unity” with the archdiocese.

There’s no canonical obstacle barring the Ordinariate from inviting the nuns to return to Atonement, but it might not be feasible because religious orders need the permission of the bishop or archbishop where they live and work, Galles said.

Religious scholar

R. Scott Woodward of the Oblate School of Theology agreed. The archbishop’s decisions don’t sound “out of the ordinary” given the challenges, “despite the best efforts of people on both sides.”

“People don’t really realize the significance of these kinds of switches,” Woodward said. “They think it’s simply a change in name, but in fact it does change things,” including “who they answer to, how they run schools, who is their pastor and who works there.”

Will rift continue?

Despite the Ordinariate’s mission to promote unity among Anglicans and Catholics — a goal touted on its website — centuries-old divisions continue to surface in ways that may be pastoral, theological and practical.

The Ordinariate “was designed to serve people who wanted to leave certain things behind,” he said, pointing to the ordination of women and active homosexuals in the Anglican Church.

“So, you have a situation where folks are leaving one church to join another because they were disgruntled,” he said. “They are moved to something different than they find in most Catholic Churches today.”

Parishioners have felt this firsthand. O’Brien, who described himself as a professed atheist who read himself back to Catholicism, was shocked to learn of the continued rift between church traditionalists and progressives.

“This quote-unquote ‘war’ has been going on since the second Vatican Council,” he said.

And he predicts continued strife.

“Pope Francis is less than supportive of traditional movements in the church,” O’Brien said. “He’s not an adversary, but he shows no emphasis or desire to see it flourish like Pope Benedict.”