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A community of Catholic monks on a reputably 'holy island' off the coast of Wales is at the centre of a major child abuse scandal going back more than 50 years. Thousands of tourists visit Caldey off the Pembrokeshire coast each year unaware of its dark history of sex abuse against infants as young as three. Visiting children, who have now grown to adults, say they were raped in the historic abbey, sexually abused in the ornate gardens and threatened that they would go to hell if they breathed a word to anyone back on the mainland. This week, The...

Mariawald Trappist Abbey Closed Down -- Summorum Undone by Current Vatican Regime The Trappist Monastery of Mariawald, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was probably the only monastic house in the world to make use of the provision present in Article 3 of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that allowed for the whole conversion of such a house to the exclusive use of the Traditional Rite. We covered this momentous news in 2008 (see our 2012 post), and in 2015 we published the translation of a great interview granted by the abbot responsible for this change, Dom Josef Vollberg. The traditional turn...

I am an Indian Catholic of Portuguese Descent. I am originally from Goa, India but I have lived all my life in Mumbai- formerly known as Bombay. I am 44 years old going on 45. I am interested in joining an English Speaking Trappist Monastery somewhere in the West as there are none in India. I still live in Mumbai. I am writing about Trappist Monasteries and about the Trappist Vocation as not much is known about them in the West as well as in the East. The Trappist Vocation : Trappists are Catholic - Christian Monks who live a...

Trappist Brother Jonah Pociadlo prepares to pour Spencer ale (CNS) Two members spent six months learning the art in BelgiumA Trappist brewery has opened for the first time in the United States.The new brew, Spencer Trappist Ale, is made at St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, by Cistercian, or Trappist, monks who wear the distinctive black and white habit.Brother Jonah Pociadlo told Catholic News Service: “It’s got a wonderful smell to it. I hesitate to describe it, because it’s something I think is pretty subjective. But I can almost taste it without it even touching my lips.”The association requires...

The discovery of the decapitated heads of seven French Trappist monks in Algeria in May 1996 shocked France and provoked a great outpouring of public emotion. Over 10,000 people gathered in Paris’s Place du Trocadéro to show their solidarity with the murdered monks. Earlier that year, in March, the monks had been abducted from the Tibhirine monastery in the Atlas mountains by a group of 20 armed men. For many, their decapitation also marked the climax of Algeria’s civil war between Islamist rebel groups and the Algerian government. The monks’ bodies were never found, which raised questions about who had...

From the website of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei comes a very important announcement (NLM translation): The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei has, on November 21st, 2008, communicated to the Most Reverend Abbot Fr Josef Vollberg O.C.S.O. of the Abbey of Mariawald in Germany (diocese of Aachen) the privilege conceded by the Holy Father of a complete return to the Liturgy and the Observance in use in the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) until 1963/64. Fr Abbot Josef Vollberg himself had in fact presented to the Holy Father a plea to be allowed to return to the Liturgy...