Notre Dame de Sion

"We have to make our hearts bigger, make no distinction between the Latin and the Greek, the Muslim and the Jew, but embrace all in love".
Alphonse Ratisbonne

In 1861, Father Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne began to build the convent of Saint John in Montana in Ein Karem so as to enable the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion in Jerusalem and their pupils to savor the pure air of the Judean hills. The Jerusalem foundation was the first one of the young Congregation of Our Lady of Sion made outside of France.

Following the massacres in Lebanon (1863), the Ein Karem convent started very soon to take in orphan girls. The sisters began to serve the village through a school and a dispensary. After the departure of the Arab population in 1948, and above all after Jerusalem`s unification in 1967, the house gradually became a guest house, and it has remained that until the present.