Communitas
Lectio
St. Benedict's has been the parish church of Mount Saviour since the monks came up the river in 1857. The parish prays in the abbey church, and the monks pray with the parish: their day of psalms is our day too, and anyone may come in and sit in the back for as long as they like.
We are farmers and students, retreatants and old Mount Saviour families, and a good number of people who drove out once for bread and kept coming back. The bells ring seven times a day. You are welcome at every one of them.
Memoria
Two monks from St. Vincent's in Pennsylvania came up the Missouri in 1857 to serve the German farmers and river men of the new Kansas Territory. They said Mass in a log house on Second Street until the parish and the young community built the first stone church on the bluff in 1863. The present abbey church, quarried from the same limestone, was consecrated in 1927. The monks have kept the Divine Office in it without a day's break since, through two floods, a fire in the bakery, and the winter of 1936.
Ministri
Rt. Rev. Anselm Hartmann, OSB
Abbot
Abbot Anselm entered the community in 1986 from a wheat farm forty miles west. He still knows every field on the road to Hiawatha by its crop.
Rev. Tomás Villarreal, OSB
Pastor
Fr. Tomás grew up in Garden City, was ordained in 2019, and celebrates the Spanish Mass. On Tuesdays he is in the bakery by four.
Margaret Keane
Parish Administrator
Margaret has run the parish office for sixteen years and is an oblate of the abbey. She will find you a seat for Christmas.
Joseph Adler
Director of Music
Joseph plays the 1929 Kilgen organ and trains the parish schola, which sings with the monks on solemnities.
Opera
Oblates of St. Benedict
Lay men and women who live the Rule in ordinary life. Monthly Saturday meetings with the novice master.
oblates@stbenedictsabbey-demo.org
Retreat House
Twelve rooms, three meals, and the Hours. Private and guided retreats all year; parishioners pay what they can.
Parish Schola
Sings Gregorian chant with the monastic choir on feast days. Rehearsals Wednesday after Vespers.
Lectio Divina Circle
Tuesday evenings in the guest parlour: the Sunday Gospel read slowly, four times, and what it says to you.
Abbey Bakery Volunteers
Shape loaves with the monks on Friday mornings. Aprons provided; no experience needed.
Grupo de Oración
Rosario y reflexión en español, los jueves a las 7 en la capilla de la cripta.
Imagines
