Nuns Hope Public Can Help With Funds Needed For Repairs At 130-Year-Old Bronx Monastery

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A group of nuns is splitting their time between praying, and fundraising.

Corpus Christi Monastery in the Bronx is almost 130-years-old, and in need of repair.

As CBS2's Raegen Medgie reported, the sisters there are hoping the public can help answer their prayers.

Everyday the Dominican nuns pray and sing inside their beloved Monastery.

The old stone building is home for the nuns, and the years are showing on the walls.

"The plaster here and the wallpaper has come off many times. It's peeled during the mass. We've had our maintenance man glue it, but it keeps coming off," Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart said.

Sister Mary showed CBS2 around the chapel where mass is held for the public on Sunday, and where the nuns pray and sing.

"There's a lot of mold. It's not healthy, and we need it cleaned and painted," she said, "As you can see the mold here. When the school children come for mass, the chapel is packed and it's not healthy to breathe that."

Every Sunday up to 50 people from the neighborhood come to the chapel to pray, but a big concern is what's going on above -- paint is peeling off.

"Some of the plaster just falls off or peels off during mass, so that needs to be repaired and also painted," Sister Mary said.

The cost to remove the plaster and wallpaper, then clean up the mold and paint the inside of the chapel is $150,000. The nuns are fundraising the money on their own.

"It's very important for us, because that's our life, our prayer life," Sister Mary said.

A life that Sister Mary wants to share with others in a place filled with beauty, not crumbling walls.

The hope is to have the repairs finished by May 29, that's the day the chapel will celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Dominican Order and the Feast of Corpus Christi.