Atlas Abbey
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| Monastery information | |
|---|---|
| Order | Trappists |
| Established | March 7, 1938 |
| Mother house | Aiguebelle Abbey |
| Diocese | Archdiocese of Alger |
| Abbot | Dom Christian de Chergé, O.C.S.O. (1996) |
| Country | Algeria |
The Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas (Arabic: دير سيدة الأطلس; French: Abbaye Notre Dame de Atlas) is a Roman Catholic monastery of Cistercians-Trappists, inaugurated on March 7, 1938 in Tibhirine, close to Médéa, in Algeria.
The abbey became more known in 1996, when seven monks were kidnapped from the monastery, during the Algerian Civil War, and are believed to have been later assassinated. The movie Of Gods and Men, released in 2010, tells the events that led to their assassination.
In 1843, Trappist monks of Aiguebelle Abbey built an abbey in Staoueli, in French Algeria, in order to train the population in modern agriculture techniques. The Staoueli Abbey and its agriculture cultivation were growing quickly. But in 1904 the monks left the country because of the difficulties to make the territory profitable and for fear of the French law on associations passed in 1901, which limited the rights of religious congregations.
In 1933–34, some Trappist monks of the Deliverance Abbey, in Slovenia, went to Algeria. The monks reached Fort Alger through different abbeys, the Abbey of Notre-Dame des Dombes and the Aiguebelle Abbey. Among them there can be mentioned, Father Marcel (born in Taisey which is part of Saint Rémy, in Saône and Loire, in 1868) and Father Berchmans (Joseph Baillet) and his brother Father Benoit (Stanislas Baillet).
The community lived in a monastic refuge in Ouled-Trift, which was then transferred, in 1935, to Ben Chicao, located 20 km from Médéa and 100 km south of Algiers, in the mountain range of Atlas. In 1938, the Aiguebelle Abbey became the mother abbey of this community. The monks set up the Atlas monastery, on March the 7th, 1938, close to the Lodi village founded by colonists in 1848, in the agriculture territory of Tib-Harins, which became Tibhirine after 1962 Tib-Harine means “Gardens” in Berber and specifically vegetable garden: this term brings to mind the “ garden terraces” around the monastery, irrigated by a basin. It is a big home in the country, a farm, which is dominated by the Tibhirine Forest. The community numbered firstly thirteen monks including some who were already present in Staouéli.
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