TWELVE nuns are leaving their Oxfordshire convent after converting to Catholicism.

The dozen are the first in Oxfordshire – and only the second in the country – to leave the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church under a new initiative set up by the Pope.

The Anglican sisters, including the Mother Superior, will leave Wantage’s Community of St Mary the Virgin next month. Sixteen others will remain.

Their departure follows a drive by Pope Benedict XVI to enable Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church.

It is the first time county nuns have left to join the Pope’s Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, set up last year.

A group of three nuns left a convent in Walsingham, Norfolk, last year.

The St Mary’s convent in Challow Road, Wantage, was founded in the mid-19th century through a “spiritual revival” known as the Oxford Movement, one of the first since the reformation of the 16th century.

It hit headlines last year when a care assistant won an unfair dismissal case amid allegations of abuse and bullying. A spokesman for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham said the group’s conversion was not related to the tribunal.

In a statement, Mother Winsome, the Superior of the Community, said: “We believe the Holy Father’s offer is a prophetic gesture which brings to a happy conclusion the prayers of generations of Anglicans and Catholics who have sought a way forward for Christian unity.”

The sisters will retain some Anglican traditions and practices, including English plainchant, a form of chanting.

Ordinariate spokesman Monsignor Keith Newton said: “Those formed in the tradition of the Oxford Movement cannot help but be moved to respond to Pope Benedict’s generous invitation to Anglicans.”

The Church of England wished the nuns well.

Bishop of Oxford The Rt Rev John Pritchard said there were a “number of important legal and financial issues” to resolve.

He added: “Conversations have been going on for some months with the sisters who have indicated they want to join the ordinariate.

“We wish the ordinariate nuns well as they seek a new life.”

The nuns will be received into the full communion of the Catholic Church on January 1 at the Oxford Oratory in Woodstock Road.

In April last year, former care assistant Christine Sheldon won an employment tribunal case for unfair dismissal against the community. She was sacked over alleged mistreatment of sisters, including abusive behaviour and failure to feed an elderly nun.

The tribunal found she was given no “proper opportunity” to defend herself but there were “reasonable grounds” she had shown misconduct. A post on the convent’s website, posted last April but still in place yesterday, said there had been a “lack of support shown to both Mother and the community from sections of the wider Christian community”.

Ordinariate spokesman Father James Bradley said: “There is no link between the tribunal and nuns leaving.”

He said 1,500 lay people, 81 priests and 35 to 40 Anglican congregations had left for the church in the UK since the initiative started last year.

The Pope said it would help achieve the “ultimate goal” to create a “full ecclesial communion”.