Lilies of the Field (1963)

Sidney Poitier as the life-loving ex-GI who one day encounters five nuns escaped from beyond the Berlin Wall...

An unemployed construction worker heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior, who believes the man has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.