Located in the northwestern part of Goa, close to the capital and some 30 kilometers from the place where Saint Francis Xavier is buried, the monastery will rise on a stone pedestal and have wide sweeping views of the wonderful landscape of local palm trees. The Indian Ocean provides a remarkable backdrop, and sometimes, from afar, over the morning mist, one can discern the towers and pediments of old churches built by Portuguese colonizers.

The building will be the new home of some thirty nuns. It will also have a social center offering training courses for women, as well as facilities for retreats that can be used by the numerous missionaries and members of religious orders living in this part of the world.

The monastery is organized around very open courtyards where air can flow freely, an important thing in a place where the lowest temperature during the year is 27ºC and humidity gets close to 90%. There is a church that is open to the public, a private chapel, places to work in, a library, and, just as the nuns and other future users instructed the architect, “places in which space, light, proportions, everything, is conducive to prayer.

Everything will be built with the local stone, the same stone that comes from the ground the building sits on, an extraordinarily porous, red stone that gradually takes on the dark hue of time past. So it is that the monastery comes across as a continuation of the mountain itself. Inside and out, everything will be simple and austere, in accordance with the principles of the order.