Holy Hermit Sr Angela of Stroud

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Sister Angela of Stroud (1926 - 2002)

Wendy Hope Solling was born in Maitland, New South Wales on March 7, 1926, and was sent to boarding school in Moss Vale due to her chronic bronchitis. She studied at East Sydney Technical College immediately after WWII, and then at Slade Art School in London, where her sculptures were well received. In 1952 she returned to Australia and held several more exhibitions of her work. Some of her works now reside in the Anglican cathedral in Newcastle, NSW.

After meeting a Franciscan priest, she returned to England to to join the Anglican Community of St Clare in 1955 in Freeland, Oxfordshire, taking the name of Sister Angela. In 1975, at the request of the Bishop of Newcastle, she led the establishment of a community of Clare Sisters at Stroud in the Diocese of Newcastle, NSW. She was the guiding force behind the construction of a group of buildings of handmade mud bricks and local timbers decorated with her sculptures, including the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Hermitage of the Bernadine of Siena. The Society of St Francis and the Sisters of St Clare built a community together.

Sister Angela was an unconventional leader, believing that the rules of religious “are made by men…because they are afraid we don’t know how to love…if we knew how to love fully enough, none of these rules would be required”. She made a space at Stroud to which people could retreat.

The community at Stroud was described by Patricia Brennan (1999, p.18) as

“a church in exile for women and men seeking a wider vision of Christian spirituality”.

Sister Angela supported the push for the ordination of women, saying,

“I don’t understand the ins and outs at all, but I’m with you all the way because it’s what I feel in my heart and in prayer”.

She was an early candidate, ordained a deacon at the age of 66 on November 11, 1989 and a priest on December 21, 1992.

Members of her community dwindled, and she opened the convent to lay women who wanted to learn about spirituality, Aboriginal culture and living with the land. Sister Angela then lived there alone, until in 2000 she accepted an offer to become an assistant priest in Massachusetts, USA, where she also worked as an artist with the disabled.

She died at Brevard, North Carolina on January 20, 2002 of a massive stroke.

Patricia Brennan described her as

“a creature of holy disorder, colliding with the discipline of an artist and disturbing those who value the church as an exclusive institution” (Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2002).