In 1908, two students at St John's decided to form a religious community, the Association of the Divine Call, with three-year vows of celibacy.
The establishment of the Association received a lukewarm response from Archbishop Lowther Clarke, and, after ordination in 1910,[3] the members of the community went their own ways.
In 1918, at the end of WWI, three army chaplains resolved to form a religious community; and in that year Radford offered them the ruins of Bishopthorpe.
[10] The sequence of names is a logical one in theological terms for Kelly: from the Divine Call whilst as an ordinand, through the experience of Crucifixion as an army chaplain in the trenches, on to the Resurrection when learning to live the religious life, through to the Ascension when professed in his own community.
[13] Nothing came of this, and there would not be an Anglican monastic theological college in Australia until 1947, when the Society of the Sacred Mission established St Michael's House near Adelaide.
Williams built the Ascensionists' living quarters and chapel (including an ambulatory) out of the former stables, hay loft, and attached buildings of Bishopthorpe.
[16] The Community had a large and striking outdoor crucifix, cast in bronze by the Belgian sculptor, Aloïs de Beule, and located within the calvary garden.
Benson went on to narrowly survive becoming one of the New Guinea Martyrs (Anglican missionaries murdered by the Japanese and pagan tribesmen in WWII), and was presumed dead for three years, until he stumbled out of the jungle in 1945.
[26] Benson then painted a large fresco of the martyrs on the sanctuary wall of Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura as a memorial to them.
From 1941 to 1943 the House of Ascension was home to St Gabriel's School, Waverley, in Sydney, run by the Community of the Sisters of the Church, in order to keep the girls safe from Japanese bombardment.
The CHN ran a girls' home in Goulburn, and, on the closure of the House of Ascension, the Community gave de Beule's crucifix to them.