The nun, the monk and the brief encounter that led to forbidden love and marriage
SHE had spent 24 years living a devout, austere and mostly solitary life as a nun.
But all that changed after Sister Mary Elizabeth’s chance encounter with a visiting monk where they accidentally brushed sleeves in the convent parlour, leading to them falling in love and getting married.
The brief meeting between Sister Mary Elizabeth and Friar Robert Opala prompted him to send her a message asking: ‘Would you leave your order and marry me?’
He had been visiting the Carmelite convent in Preston, Lancashire, from a priory in Oxford – both run by the same Roman Catholic order.
Sister Mary Elizabeth had at that point spent 24 years living by strict rules as a nun when the meeting, during which the prioress accompanying her had left the room to take a phone call, changed her life for ever.
Both have since left the order, with Sister Mary Elizabeth reverting to her birth name of Lisa and marrying Friar Robert.
Now 49, she works as a hospital chaplain, while Mr Opala, 60, has joined the Church of England and become a vicar.
The couple’s story was revealed yesterday on BBC Radio 4’ s Beyond Belief programme.
Describing how they met in 2015, the former Sister Mary Elizabeth – now Mrs Lisa Opala – said: ‘It was our first time in a room together. We sat at a table as he ate, and the prioress didn’t come back so I had to let him out.’
As she let Mr Opala out of the
door, she brushed his sleeve and says she felt something of a jolt.
Mrs Opala said: ‘I just felt a chemistry there, something, and I was a bit embarrassed. And I thought, gosh, did he feel that too? As I let him out the door it was quite awkward.’
About a week later she received the message asking if she would leave to marry him.
She added: ‘I was a little bit shocked. I wore a veil so he never even saw my hair colour. He didn’t even know my worldly name.’
Mrs Opala became a nun despite her parents not being religious. Instead her spirituality was awakened when she was six years old, inspired by an aunt’s pilgrimage to Lourdes.
She then asked her father to build an altar in her bedroom at the family home in Middlesbrough. After becoming a nun at 19, she
recalled living ‘like a hermit’ and saw her mother just four times a year, speaking through a grille.
Initially, Mrs Opala didn’t give her now husband – who grew up in Poland – an answer to his question. She only knew of him vaguely after he had given mass while visiting Preston, and she had heard anecdotes about his upbringing in
Silesia and his love of mountains. She added: ‘I didn’t know what it feels like to be in love. I could feel the change in me and that scared me.’ Mrs Opala told her prioress, who responded in disbelief, leading to her walking out on a rainy November night and never looking back. She said: ‘The prioress
was little bit snappy with me, so I put my pants and a toothbrush in a bag and walked out.’
Mr Opala had sent her another message saying he was planning to visit Preston again that evening to meet a friend.
She guessed which pub they might be at and set off. But Mr Opala, who had been a Carmelite friar for 13 years, was initially ‘paralysed by fear’ when she walked through the door.
He said: ‘My heart stopped. I knew in that moment that I had to be entirely for Lisa. My fear was purely about how I would start a new life at the age of 53.’
The couple found their transition ‘difficult, particularly at the beginning’ – including when they had a job centre appointment where they were asked about their transferrable skills.
Mrs Opala, who was 44 when she
left the convent, said at one point the couple felt they had ‘hit rock bottom’ and even considered ‘doing something like Romeo and Juliet and just [ending] it’, but added: ‘We just held hands and we got through it.’
Despite their struggles, she began working at a funeral home and later became a hospital chaplain. Mr Opala – who received a letter from Rome telling him he could no longer be a member of the Carmelite order – was soon accepted into the Church of England. The couple married in July 2016 and settled in Hutton Rudby, North Yorkshire, where Robert is now a vicar at the local church.
Mrs Opala said: ‘I often think that I live in a monastery here with Robert. Love can make a sacrament of everything you do and I realise that nothing has really changed for me.’
‘I just felt a chemistry there’