ONE of Minsteracres’ most popular figures is leaving the Passionist community for pastures new.

Sister Therese O’ Regan has been a familiar face at the Christian retreat centre near Kiln Pit Hill for almost seven years and says it will be a real wrench to say goodbye.

However, she is returning to her roots in a way, to Manchester, where she was brought up from the age of nine after her parents moved there from West Cork and where her brother, Danny, still lives.

At the age of 71 she has been elected to be Sister Provincial at the Convent of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion.

She will be responsible for the pastoral care of some 90 people in the UK and Ireland as well as the order’s outreach ministry and financial and administrative management.

Manchester is where the congregation was founded in 1850.

Sister Therese arrived at Minsteracres in January 2010, amid 12ft snow drifts. It was certainly a shock to the system as she had spent the previous 36 years as a missionary out in the heat of Botswana.

“The icicles were from the gutters to the floor,” Sister Therese recalled. “I had come from Botswana where the temperature was between 38-40 degrees.

“It was an absolutely horrific shock to the system – particularly as this house didn’t have the biomass boiler we now have, so it was a cold house to come into. But I adapted quite well,” she laughed.

In Botswana, she had spent the first 20 years teaching in a city secondary school for 600 pupils before moving to the remote village of Tsabong in the Kalahari desert.

By the time she left Tsabong after 16 years, every single family who had been living in mud huts glued together with cow dung had moved into new, brick houses.

“When I came here it was up to me to find a role, so being a sociable sort of character, I took to hospitality, delivering parish retreats.

“When you live in a community situation, you really turn your hand to anything that needs to be done and you try to make it a welcoming place for people,” she said.

Sister Therese has loved her time here. “I had been living in a village out in the Kalahari desert where, when you went out your front door, you were surrounded by people all day long, so to live in a house this size, with so many people flowing through it, suited me very well.

“I really appreciated the warmth and friendliness of the people in this area. Part of what makes life in Minsteracres so good is the resident community, but we also have wonderful staff and an army of volunteers.”

Operations manager at Minsteracres Geoff Bockett said Sister Therese will be much missed: “She is a fun-loving, pragmatic person who likes to get things done yesterday! She has a flare for gardening and flower arranging, which hasbrightened many a corner at Minsteracres.”

Communications manager Nuala O’Brien agreed: “She is always the first up on the dance floor and the last to sit down; always ready with a song. It will be a lot quieter around here without her.”

For her part, Sister Therese is adamant she will be back to visit. “Try and keep me away,” she said.