Their pleas come despite the windows' removal from the chapel being officially approved by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, as an affected party, and despite the windows' owners express wishes to refit them where people could appreciate and enjoy them.
Windows in the unused, unprotected and isolated rural chapel have been the target of considerable vandalism in recent years.
Lawyer Garth Lucas, acting for the New Zealand Dominican Sisters Trust Board, has applied to the Waitaki District Council for land-use resource consent to remove the windows, which depict five Dominican saints.
The windows were retained in the ownership of the board when the former boarding school and its stone chapel were sold to the late Dr Hirotomi Ochi in 2000.
Dr Ochi, who died in 2005, had planned to redevelop the property into an international health science education centre.
Those plans came to nothing after his death as his business directors in Japan terminated his ambitions and put the Teschemakers assets on the market.
The resource consent application said it was the Dominican Sisters' intention to gift the five windows - the only stained glass windows in the chapel - to a parish within Otago, where many of the sisters had an association, and where they would be "welcomed, reinstalled and be available to be enjoyed in a church setting by many people".
The chapel building was for sale by the administrator of the Ochi estate and the sisters had no probability of the continued association, by contract and informally, that they had enjoyed with Dr Ochi.
The windows had religious significance for the sisters and also for many former pupils of the school.
The removal would have a "minimal effect" on the building.
The sisters owned the chapel's other 19 full-size lancet (Gothic-arched) leadlight windows, but were negotiating for those, plus a large rose window and three minor lancet windows, to remain in the chapel.
When contacted, Bruce Albiston, of Burnside Homestead, acknowledged the windows were of very high significance to the Catholic faith, but said they belonged to the chapel and he would fully support their retention.
He said the chapel's marble altar belonged there too.
Waitaki district councillor Peter Garvan said the chapel, inclusive of the windows, the altar, and the stations of the cross, should be retained intact.
