A Brief History of Our Local Community

It was while Fern Niehaus, the founder of our community, and his wife Mae were visiting the Carmel of St. Joseph in Avila, Spain, that he was inspired to promise Our Lady of Mount Carmel and our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus that he would start a Secular Order Discalced Carmelite community in his home Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. This took place in the early 80s.

In 1986, Fern asked twelve professed members (isolated at the time) of a former Kentucky community to join in starting a Cincinnati community which they did. The new community received permission of the local ordinary, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk. Since there were no Carmelite priests in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, the Archbishop appointed a diocesan priest, Father Robert Hagedorn, to serve as our Spiritual Assistant. Father Hagedorn had been professor at the Archdiocesan seminary, Mount St. Mary, and later became pastor of the parish of St. Antoninus. Through the Carmelite Central Provincial in Wisconsin, the necessary papers were received from Rome to canonically establish the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites in Cincinnati in May of 1986.

Ferd was elected to be its first president in February of 1987 and, by special permission and by enthusiastic community acclamation, remained president until 1997, when he was succeeded by Dr. Richard Dumont.