Pat Hussey and Barbara Ferraro have spent most of the past 25 years quietly helping those in need at Charleston’s Covenant House.

In between, they became the center of an international controversy, eventually resigning from their religious order — both had been nuns for more than 20 years — rather than recant their support for a dialogue on reproductive rights.

Now, the two are leaving Charleston and returning to New England to be with family, according to a letter from Covenant House Thursday.

They wrote in the letter, “At the end of this year, we will leave Covenant House. At ages 63 and 57, we are not in a position to retire yet, nor are we leaving to take new positions. Rather, as we have grown older, so have our family members, including parents. Personal responsibilities call us back to New England.”

Neither Hussey nor Ferraro could immediately be reached for comment Thursday evening.

According to the letter, Covenant House will seek community input this year on the transition to new leaders. Hussey and Ferraro have run Covenant House since 1981.

Kanawha Hospice and West Virginia Health Right both started at Covenant House. So did the state’s first residential program for people living with AIDS. Covenant House helped start the Sojourners shelter for women and children.

In 1983, Covenant House filed a Supreme Court brief stating that “all people in West Virginia have a right to shelter, food and medical care.” West Virginia became the second state in the nation to provide those basic rights.

By 2003, 30 churches and temples were contributing to Covenant House’s food pantry, clothing closet and emergency assistance fund. Covenant House has grown from a $40,000 budget, 50 volunteers and 8,900 contacts with clients 25 years ago to a $1.3 million budget, 220 volunteers and 31,378 contacts last year.

But Hussey and Ferraro may always be best remembered for simply signing their names to a full-page New York Times ad in 1984 — then refusing to take them off.

“A Diversity of Opinions Regarding Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics” was the headline. More than 20 nuns and priests signed their names, but Vatican pressure caused all but Ferraro and Hussey to recant.

After a four-year fight for the right to disagree with the Catholic Church hierarchy — and after being warned that they would be expelled from their order if they didn’t recant — the two nuns resigned from their order.