A nun who has been operating a hermitage near the southern slopes of Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo, for the past nine years has put the property up for sale because of difficulties in having the Latin, or Tridentine, Mass celebrated there.
Sister Irene Gibson models her Mount Tabor Hermitage at Drummin, Westport, on the strict enclosed rules of the 12th century Carthusian monks.
She has spent £250,000 building a church, renovating a cottage and constructing four "monastic cells" on a remote four-acre site. She announced this week that she is selling the hermitage because she and other sisters are "not being given the privilege of living a full sacramental life in the valley as other enclosed nuns are given".
When she started her project in the early 1990s, Sister Irene went on the Late Late Show to outline her plans for "a traditional community of women religious dedicated to a life of prayer and adoration, religious mortification and penance in the silence of solitude for the salvation of all people but in particular for priests". Her community ranged from one to two others, over the period.
Yesterday, Sister Irene, who has placed the sale of the hermitage in the hands of a Westport-based firm of auctioneers, said she has agonised over whether to sell for the past two years.
"It has been a very difficult time and I have shed a lot of tears," she stated.
She added: "Two years ago I had an auctioneer out but I broke down and could not go through with it. It is breaking my heart but sure what can I do."
She stressed that the central reason behind her decision to leave was the non-availability of the Tridentine Mass.
Many priests would not celebrate the Tridentine Mass, she claimed. "There is a hatred for the old Mass amongst the Hierarchy," she said.
"Very few people are tolerant towards the old Mass, especially the Hierarchy. They don't want to hear about it. It is gone, it is finished."
Sister Irene said she had a conversion some years ago from being a "liberal Catholic" to being a traditional Catholic that follows the teachings of the church exactly as they were prior to Vatican II.
She says she now has plans to sell the four-acre property with cottage, church and four cells and move, probably to Athlone, where a Tridentine Mass is celebrated every Sunday.
She explained that she had an invitation to set up a community in the Philippines but "I love my country and I would love to see a community of traditional sisters in this country. I think it is badly needed.
"I would love for the hermitage to be sold to a Catholic community who would use the church for worship but I have no say in that."
The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, is in Lourdes and wasn't available for comment yesterday.
However, a spokesman for the archdiocese said he regretted that Sister Irene did not appear to have found her original vision practicable.