This is the second part of the story of the author’s visit to a monastery in western Pennsylvania. Part one may be found here.

The founding of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration was the dream of Princess Ileana of Romania who became a nun in 1961 in Bussy, France. Later, when she was known as Mother Alexandra, she wanted to establish a Pan-Orthodox monastery with all of the services in English, but didn’t know where it would be located. 

In 1967, there were no Orthodox monasteries for women in the United States. Even among the various Orthodox churches, the concept of women religious living together in a monastery was viewed as something only Catholics do. When Ileana attempted to canvass Orthodox clergy and potential donors for funds to build Transfiguration, she encountered shocked reactions: “That’s not Orthodox,” she was told. It was suggested if she wanted to found a monastery for nuns she needed to go over to the Catholic Church.

On my first day at Transfiguration, I headed over to the dining room to meet Mother Paula, the guest master who arranged my stay, and to share a midday lunch.

The service began without a priest; the nuns’ choir, composed of ten nuns with a visiting nun from Alaska, was finished in less than an hour. Afterwards Mother Paula escorted me back into the chapel and pointed out an icon of Christ on the iconostasis, a gift from Tasar Nicholas II. On the other side of the Royal Doors, she indicated an icon of the Virgin that once belonged to Queen Marie of Romania. Mother Paula said the Queen used to hold the icon before Romanian troops prior to their going to war. 

The Nicholas II icon of Christ was especially compelling: Who had touched it, I wondered. Had it ever fallen into the hands of Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin; had the icon ever been placed by the bedside of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolavich? 

The large Oriental carpet in the main part of the chapel was also a gift from Tsar Nicholas II. Although a little threadbare in places it was remarkably well preserved. 

I followed Mother Paula throughout the monastery as she pointed out various items of interest: The princess’s chair where she sat as Abbess; her staff; a collection of plate ware with the family crest from the royal yacht; silverware (also from the Tsar). We entered the dining room through a “nuns only” entrance for expediency’s sake, a route I would take the following day only to be gently reprimanded by a young nun that the passageway was for “the sisters only.” 

Standing at Ileana’s grave, just a short walk from the general monastery, I was struck by the top layer of white pebbles covering the site. Stones or pebbles are common Jewish grave markers since they symbolize a show of respect for the deceased; they also serve as an indicator that someone has visited the gravesite. Yet the princess was not Jewish. Perhaps the pebbles were merely a utilitarian way to save mowing the grass or frame the grave in a special way that made it stand out from the other graves.

The name on the headstone cross, Mother Alexandra-Princess Ileana, suggested the famed Abbess never forgot she was a princess. This dual-identity — many monastics, as my exchange with Mother Paula showed, seemed to put their former lives in the dustbin of the forgettable — would come into play in a larger sense during my interview with Dominic Habsburg (in actuality a prince), Princess Ileana’s sole surviving son. 

An old woman stood before another grave not too far from where I was standing. She didn’t seem to notice me; her full attention seemed to be on her prayers. I left the cemetery after a bit and proceeded to walk among the fields and trees that encompass the monastery’s 96 acres. I imagined Ileana taking in the same view almost fifty years ago. A small bench in front of a tree facing a statue of the crucifixion seemed a good place to sit and let my mind wander. 

No sooner had I settled on the bench when in the distance I noticed a nun walking in the field nearest the chapel. The nun had a sort of pale colored wide brim hat on top of her veil. The nun was alone and walking far into the field; I watched as she circled back towards the monastery. She was too far away for me to recognize a face yet for an instant the sight reminded me of a scene out of an old Katherine Hepburn movie. 

Earlier that day after lunch one of the younger nuns washing dishes walked by me with a Pittsburgh Steelers hat on top of her veil. It was the same nun who had corrected me for walking down the wrong hallway. This time she gave me a cheery hello. “Ah,” I thought, “this Steelers nun has a sense of humor after all.” 

My interview with Mother Christophora, the current Abbess of Transfiguration, was due to take place after my walk in the fields. Raised in an Orthodox family in northeastern Pennsylvania, she entered Transfiguration at age 29. 

Mother Christophora is a woman who commands the kind of respect you’d give a head of state or diplomat. 

“I’m here 41 years as a sister,” Mother Christophora told me. “I’ve been abbess since 1987. I was 29 when I came here though I started coming here in 1981 and joined in ’83. By that time Mother Alexandra had retired.”

We talked about the artifacts in the monastery from the princess’s life in Romania. “There are a few plates from Ileana’s yacht and some silver from the Tsar.” There was also the icon of Christ in the chapel, of course, but where was the wooden statue of Saint Benedict?

The statue is mentioned in Ileana’s book, I Live Again as one of the important items she took with her after her expulsion from Romania.

“We were permitted to take only personal belongings,” Ileana wrote. “It is for that reason the statue of St. Benedict stands today in my bedroom, after having been smuggled out ‘by permission’ in window draperies.” 

Mother Christophora confirmed that Ileana had the statue of St. Benedict in her bedroom in St. Bridget’s House and in her will it was to go to one of her children but she didn’t know which child. 

Later, I would discover that it went to Dominic Habsburg, Ileana’s sole surviving son. Later, when I would travel to Dominic Habsburg’s home outside Purdys, New York, I would spot the statue in his house. At that point Dominic told me that when he was a little boy he would run his hands all over the statue in Romania’s Bran castle. 

I had an experience in St. Bridget’s House having to do with Ileana’s old bedroom.

In the living room there are a set of double wooden doors that lead to another part of the house. A posted sign on the left door cautioned against opening it and stated that only the right door was to be used. The note suggested free access, so of course I used the right door to see what was behind it. To my surprise it opened up into an entire bedroom suite and a large bathroom. The bedroom was decorated with pictures and some icons and the bed was unusually large with an outdated headboard. I poked around a bit, aware this was where Ileana probably slept but curious as to why it was not being utilized fully as were the other rooms in the house. I may have closed my eyes for a minute while inspecting the rooms hoping to feel something of Ileana’s spirit or perhaps spot an artifact on a bureau top that may have belonged to the princess, but no. It was a void space, uninteresting for the most part, and so I left exiting through the operable door.

Later that evening returning from Vespers I thought I should take another look at the bedroom thinking I had dismissed it too quickly when I noticed the note cautioning against using the left door had been removed. I then went to open the right door but it was locked. How strange. Did Mother Paula tell Emmanuel to lock Ileana’s entrance, and if she did, for what reason? Was it because there was something in these rooms I wasn’t supposed to see? The feeling was a little bit like being spied upon as if somehow Mother Paula had gotten wind I’d gone into the rooms and taken a look. It then occurred to me that perhaps that wasn’t the case at all but merely a matter of Mother Paula having remembered that the one door to the bedroom was unlocked and as a matter of “formula” it should always be locked when guests visit. 

Still, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been slapped on the wrist as if the monastery didn’t trust me. I told myself I would speak to Mother Paula the following day about the doors. Why were they open and then suddenly locked? The next day when the opportunity presented itself, Mother Paula was casual and dismissive, saying the rooms are usually locked and that the bedroom suite has been changed so many times since Ileana’s death it retains nothing of its original form. Even the furniture was different, she said. 

“I did go in there,” I said. “There was a sign on the left door saying to use the right door, so that came across as a green light. Was I not supposed to go in there?”

“Oh no,” Mother Paula said, smiling, “Everybody likes to snoop. It’s natural to see what was in there. Don’t think twice about it. People do it all the time.” Her making a joke out of it made it harder for me to talk about it further. 

My last evening at Transfiguration began at Vespers when the nuns said a prayer for the book. Earlier, at the midday meal, I was asked to say a few words about myself. The kind nuns also presented me with two gift books from the bookstore. On my way to St. Bridget’s House after these farewells I was walking near the fields when I spotted the tall nun in the hat I had seen earlier returning from another walk in the woodlands. 

This time, however, I could see who the nun was. It was Mother Christophora who seemed to be walking towards me.

We exchanged a few words — she wanted to know about Philadelphia and what neighborhood I lived in — while I thanked her for her hospitality. “You’ve taken on a big project,” she said. “I’ll pray for you.”

The next morning I was up before dawn waiting for an Uber driver to pick me up at the monastery’s entrance. The car arrived in the pitch black, waiting by the side of the driveway not too far from Ileana’s grave. I hurried down to meet it. The driver was a middle-aged man and devout evangelical Christian who engaged me in conversation during the hour’s drive into Pittsburgh. Having picked me up at a monastery the talk soon turned to religion and churches, especially the Catholic Church and its veneration of statues and images, not to mention the “power” of the pope. The driver hadn’t heard an awful lot about Orthodoxy so he was silent when it came to that but at one point he began to raise his voice significantly and preach against the abuses of traditional apostolic Christianity, namely Catholicism, while insisting that Scripture and not the baggage of “the Church” was the only thing needed for salvation. 

As he made certain points the car would speed up. I opted to let him rant fearing an argument would result in an accident. As we neared Pittsburgh — the view from my window was as unspectacular as it had been on my arrival some days before — he had calmed down and was now apologizing for overdoing things. 

In Pittsburgh’s bleak Union Station, I watched as Amish families — yawning and stretching under the glare of fluorescent lights — awaited the arrival of the Pennsylvanian. 

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.