In a rare move, Catholic nuns set out to build a new monastery: Rarer still, millennial recruits are necessitating the move to larger quarters.

December 15, 2020

By: Katelyn Ferral

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Sister Mary Bede was no stranger to quarantine life. Sister Bede and 22 other Cistercian nuns who live with her at Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, are cloistered in silence according to the rule of their ancient monastic Catholic religious order.

Dedicated to constant prayer, the sisters live simply, supporting themselves by baking Communion bread for churches… they are an exception to contemporary culture: As fewer people attend Christian churches each year and with even fewer entering Catholic religious life, their community is growing. What’s more, millennials make up more than one-third of its members. At 23 women, its community, the only one of its kind in the country, isn’t huge, but its current buildings are at capacity.

Building a new monastery is exceedingly rare, says Kevin Clark, the architect for the project who started working with the sisters on it in 2017. “Less than a handful of monasteries have been designed and built in the last 40 to 50 years,” says Clark… A thousand years ago, monasteries played crucial roles in rural areas where they served as beacons for travelers, offering running water, medical care and a safe haven, Clark said. Today, building a space that is a testament to prayer where people can experience silence and peace is something that is still vital, according to the sisters. “To know that there are people out there constantly raising up the needs of our society in prayer is awesome,” Clark said. “So, do we need monasteries? I would say ‘yes.’

The new monastery will be austere by design, in accord with both traditional Cistercian architecture and the nuns’ vow of poverty. Many of the techniques the monastery’s builders will use hearken to monasteries of the Middle Ages. The hope is to integrate geothermal energy to heat water, use gray water, take full advantage of natural lighting and position the buildings on the land to protect the sisters from the wind while making the best use of it for energy. In medieval times, “you designed sustainably because you didn’t have computers and smartphones and UV panels; you didn’t have electricity; you didn’t have pumps.” All of those things are about choices that (the sisters) take seriously…

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