About two dozen retired St. Francis sisters are heartbroken that in three months they will be moved to Pearl City — out of the Manoa convent that has long been their home.

“They don’t want to leave,” said Sister Joan of Arc Souza, head of St. Francis School. The private Catholic school is run along with the convent by the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities.

Most of the nuns, retired nurses and teachers, are in their 70s and 80s, and a couple are in their 90s. Some have been living on the campus since 1932, when the original convent was a wooden building.

On Wednesday, when the sisters were officially informed about the move, “many spoke up,” Souza said, declining to further elaborate on their reaction.

Rochelle Cassella, spokeswoman for the leadership office of the Sisters of St. Francis in New York state, said the sisters will be relocated in March to the recently constructed Plaza Assisted Living at Pearl City on Kuala Street.

“We know this is a huge change for them; it’s an emotional break, but every effort will be made to provide emotional and spiritual support,” Cassella said.

The Sisters of St. Francis were instrumental in the 2012 canonization of St. Marianne Cope, who served as administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., before she moved to Hawaii in 1883 to help care for Hansen’s disease patients.

Constructed in the 1960s, the order’s four-story convent building is situated on 11 acres neighboring the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus. It includes its own infirmary, a chapel, a large dining room, a library and private rooms for the retired sisters. Retired sisters attend school plays, games and other activities at the nearby bustling school.

“That part’s over,” Souza predicted. “It will be very difficult for them” to commute long hours on traffic-clogged highways.

THE NUNS will be placed together on one floor of the Plaza, which will be outfitted with a small chapel for daily Mass, Cassella said. They will share a dining room with other residents, with the Plaza providing three meals daily. Also, the sisters will have access to more elevators than the one available at the convent. And each room will have its own bathroom. At the convent the sisters share a bathroom, Cassella said.

In addition, Cassella said, the Pearl City location will provide “new ministry opportunities and more interaction with lay people” in the community.

The relocation is based on the leadership team’s contention that “the convent is bigger than we need” for the number of people living in it, Cassella said, adding that the move is in line with the religious order’s nationwide “strategic sustainability plan.”

THE ESTIMATED cost of renovating the convent building would not exceed the cost of renting rooms at the Plaza. “It would be close to breaking even,” Cassella said. Even so, the leadership is opting to “move the sisters rather than invest in the building because it would still be more than we need.”

School officials will now consider how to use the convent for its programs.

Among the drawbacks of the move, Souza said, is that the nuns will miss leafy Manoa Valley, as “it’s very dry and hot out there” in Pearl City. Some of the retirees don’t realize they’re going to be living in air-conditioned rooms, which many don’t like, she added.

“They’ll miss a certain level of independence. It’s difficult getting to their doctors around Honolulu. They won’t have the children around there. The sisters very often participate and come to all the school functions,” Souza said.

Opening as a girls school in 1924, under Souza’s leadership St. Francis began enrolling boys in 2006, and has since expanded its curricula to offer preschool through grade 12 enrollment.

Though the Plaza will provide transportation into town, Souza said, “At 5 o’clock in the afternoon, you know what that’s like? They (the leadership team) don’t live out here and don’t know the freeways. Many of the sisters wouldn’t be able to handle it; it (the ride) would just be too long. I don’t expect the sisters to come out to any evening performances we have.”

Souza said she intends to stay put by exercising her option to live on campus in another building. “I’m not moving,” she said. “I’m not commuting every day.”