Sisters to move to new home

At a time where the world is pushing the message of “bigger and better,” the Sisters of St. Benedict have listened to the beat of their own (sacred) heart to build a new, smaller monastery. The discernment of this has been anything but spontaneous, a project of which seeds were planted long ago.

In the 1960s, the St. Benedict Monastic community had over 1,000 sisters. Now there are about 120 sisters between the monastery here in St. Joseph and their retirement facility, the St. Scholastica Convent (SSC) in St. Cloud. For the past 50 years the sisters have been taking careful consideration for what the future of their community might look like, as theirs, along with religious communities across the United States, began to dwindle down.

After considering multiple options for where the new convent should sit, including expanding the SSC, a 23-minute drive east from their current home, they decided what was most important to them was keeping their connection to St. Ben’s.

“I think it’s really good to have that kind of youth and vitality and energy close by,” Prioress Karen Rose said. “It’s significant for the students to be in touch with the women who were the founders of the college, and that’s something that not many schools can actually say.”

The new monastery will be on the west end of the St. Ben’s campus, the site of the former Common Ground Garden and Sunset Drive Garden.

While often thought of as a secular endeavor, the sisters have used prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to approach the construction process. On June 17, Prioress Karen led a Groundbreaking Ceremony to bless the ground of the new monastery. She opened with their monasterial land acknowledgment, recognizing that this land was the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples.

“I didn’t actually see this because it was taking place behind me, but two eagles flew over,” Rose said. “So, we took that, really, as a sign that kind of, yes, we could start.”

A prayer followed, asking for God’s blessing on “those who designed [the new monastery], those who will build and equip it and those who will live, worship and work in it,” she said.

Sr. Kerry O’Reilly, the community planning director, along with the rest of the sisters of her committee and the leadership team, were the first to put on their hard hats, pick up their shovels and break ground.

The vision of the new monastery can be viewed on the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict website, featuring a white circular building with large glass windows which will look out unto the woods. As this is to be the sisters’ new home, they had a say in the planning and details, headed by Sr. O’Reilly.

“We’ve had one or two people say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t look like a monastery,’” Rose said. “I feel a monastery isn’t the building— It’s the life that’s lived in the building. We are building a monastery in the 21st century, and I wanted it to look like a monastery in the 21st century.”

The new monastery will be 54,000 square feet and will feature 36 bedrooms and a chapel that can fit 150 people.

“We’re trying, as we’re planning it, to make green choices,” Rose said. These include eco-friendly geothermal and solar energy. “When we produce more solar energy than we would need for the monastery, we’ve got a system whereby that will then be diverted to the college. So, you’ll get a bit greener as well,” she said.

The idea of moving and downsizing, or “right-sizing,” as the sisters like to look at it, has been difficult for some sisters, but also brings promise to their community.

“Everybody has lots of memories associated with Sacred Heart Chapel and so on, but I think one of the things that we’ve become conscious of, is that this is just too big for us now,” Rose said. “We end up spending most of our time worrying about maintaining the buildings, rather than being able to do ministries.”

CSB Campus Ministry Director, Cindy Gonzalez, spoke on the greater impact of this move.

“I think this move will be felt,” Gonzalez said. “And although it’s going to be different because of the geographical change, I’m certain the sisters are going to show us a way forward.”

In making this long-envisioned move come true, the monastery has partnered with HGA, a Minneapolis- based architectural design company, and McGough for construction, the former of which led the comprehensive restoration of the MN State Capitol that was completed in 2017.

With the project underway, questions have arisen about what will happen with the existing monastery buildings.

“There’s nothing signed, sealed or delivered, but the hope is that the college is going to buy the current buildings,” Rose said. “At the moment, we own the chapel and the college uses it for when they need it. And we’d like to sort of reverse this, so the college would own the chapel, but we’d be able to use it.”

The finished monastery is projected to be completed by Winter 2027. The McGough construction company plans to come every two months and take drone-captured pictures to track the progress. Updates of the process will be added to the sister’s website along the way.

As founders of CSB as well as the St. Cloud Hospital, the sisters continue to pave a path forward.

“Historically, the sisters have always been leaders and pioneers in new ventures,” Gonzalez said. “And I think with this move, they continue to be those leaders in the new generation.”

Rose shared her own hopes for what this change would mean.

“We’d like to see it as a sort of a symbol as people come into St. Joseph that says you don’t have to go with the current sort of trend of ‘you need to get more, more, more,’” she said. “And that people will see it as a place of peace and calm where they can come to renew their spirit.”