Exclusive | Rural Pennsylvania nuns are building massive stone monastery by hand: We had a vision

A group of cloistered nuns in rural Pennsylvania who trace their history back to 16th-century Spain are building a sprawling monastery meant to last 1,000 years — and they’re doing it almost entirely by hand.Expected to be completed in 2041 at a cost of $100 million, the 48-acre Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph monastery in Fairfield, Penn., is entirely the vision of one woman — Mother Thérèse of Merciful Love, the 41-year-old daughter of a firefighter from Cape Cod, Mass.“We had a vision, a dream, an interior kind of intuition that there was something that we needed to do different,” Mother, as she’s known around the compound, told The Post in an exclusive interview from behind an iron screen inside the monastery’s guest house.“We are building an authentic building.”The nuns are laying the foundation brick-by-brick themselves, in between their daily spiritual duties and tending to the livestock and garden.

For the heavier lifting, they’ve brought in outside help — renowned New York architect Riccardo Vicenzino and local contractor Joe Bonifate, who is also in charge of fundraising.“They’re very good students.Good work ethic.

They arrive on time, take instruction very well,” Bonifate told The Post of his holy labor force.“If I can just find more crews that had a vow of obedience and were working toward something greater than their next raise I’d be sitting good.

We could build anything with a crew like that.”For the next couple decades, the nuns will be living on a construction site as the project comes together, but that’s not an issue.“It can be an amusing part of our day, when you’re trying to go to mass in the morning and you have to avoid being crushed by the telehandler,” Mother said.Vicenzino’s Manhattan-based firm is working on sacred spaces as far away as Texas, as well as Park Avenue and West Village apartments, but this projects is an entirely different animal.There’s no electricity, heat, A/C or runni...