Not far from the studios and Spago, cloistered Dominican sisters are busily baking bread and praying for the world. Who knew?

The Tidings offers a rare glimpse behind the grill:

Since 1934, the Monastery of the Angels has been operating three stoplights above Hollywood Boulevard – quietly, until a couple months ago when the Los Angeles Times blew its cover and ran a two-page, heart-tugging feature proclaiming that the Dominican monastery was in such dire financial straits it might close.

Fortunately, that turned out to be not exactly the case, although the old oven in which workers baked their legendary, to-die-for pumpkin bread did break down. But almost before you could say a rosary, an anonymous donor came forward to buy a new $30,000 commercial oven, and the bakers were back in business.

“That pumpkin bread story just took off, and I’m glad that it happened because it really put the spotlight on us,” says Sister Mary Raymond, prioress of the 3.5-acre, Spanish-style Monastery of the Angels at the base of the Hollywood Hills. “We wanted people to know that we are here to pray, and that’s our job and that’s our duty. But nobody from the media was interested in that angle.”

Well, not quite nobody….

The 82-year-old woman religious from Colorado and Sister Mary Pia, 76, the novice mistress, are behind the cloister’s iron grill, eager to explain to a visitor what their life of contemplative prayer is all about.

But first there’s that seemingly theological paradox of a Catholic monastery literally blocks away from the seedy streets of Hollywood peopled by assorted pushers, prostitutes, runaways and aspiring movie stars, among other folks trying to make it in La-La Land.

“When the Sisters came out here from Newark, they wanted a monastery dedicated to the angels because of Los Angeles,” Sister Mary Raymond reports. “The place was gorgeous with that huge mansion in the back. Actually, we’re sitting on what was the front lawn. So they came with the hope and thought they would, you know, be joined by people who wanted to do prayers for Hollywood particularly.”

The place was the old Giroux estate, once owned by an industrial copper king. “The Sisters didn’t want to come to Hollywood,” Sister Mary Pia says with a smile. “That was the funny thing. They didn’t want any kind of worldly association.”

But as it turned out, Hollywood – even back in the ’30s, before most of the studios and their moguls moved away – badly needed a bedrock source of spirituality.

“Because we are part of the Dominican order, we have that missionary outreach,” the novice mistress continues. “And Hollywood is a missionary place, even much more than the depths of Africa or the Far East. That is what people tell us. They pass our monastery and they say, ‘There’s people who actually believe in God in there, and they’re giving their whole lives.’ This inspires people to think of God, just to know we’re here.”

Fair enough, but a monastery of praying nuns in white habits and black veils in arguably one of the most hedonistic locales on the planet still begs the query: Don’t you get discouraged or downright depressed that your prayerful efforts seem to fall on, well, deaf ears?

“I never get depressed,” Sister Mary Pia responds. “God has his ways of coming to people.”

But Sister Mary Raymond is shaking her head. “OK, that’s her. She’s a sweet little person,” she quips. “I come from a long line of depressed Germans. People are not ignoring God, but they have their own gods: money, movies, whatever. And I just feel if they got to the right god, boy, they’d be in business ’cause they work so hard at it.”

After a pause, she says, “But the more you know there’s things going on in the world that are not quite right, it spurs you on to more asking and praying for them, and also for yourself, to try to do things better. So I think it’s not a depressing thing.”

There’s much more, so be sure to read the rest at the link.

PHOTO: by R.W. Dellinger/The Tidings