In the 134 years since religious pioneers from Indiana established a monastic community in south Louisiana, there had been only five abbots elected to head what is now the secluded St. Joseph Abbey ...

I’ve always been drawn to the quiet mystery of abbeys — in books, in travel, and even here in Louisiana. Until earlier this month I had never been to St. Joseph Abbey near Covington. All I knew about ...

The Rev. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and pioneer in the worldwide Christian contemplative prayer movement, died Thursday at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, where he had once been ...

Father Gabriel Bertonière, OCSO, a Trappist monk of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, died very peacefully at St. Mary’s Health Care Center in Worcester on October 1, 2022. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana ...

In the late 1960s, a young NCR reporter named Colman McCarthy saw the emerging decline of American Trappist monasteries and offered a diagnosis: The monastic life is not active enough. Looking back ...

Fr. Eugene Lacasse, O.C.S.O., a monk of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, died very peacefully in the early hours of Monday, September 1st, at the Abbey's infirmary. Born Joseph Raymond Emile Lacasse on ...

SPENCER, Mass. — Tucked off a two-lane highway in a hilly, wooded section of central Massachusetts, a group of Roman Catholic monks has embraced a centuries-old tradition they hope can sustain their ...