St. Joseph Abbey, Louisiana
St. Joseph Abbey Church
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 Location within Louisiana
Location within Louisiana
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| Monastery information | |
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| Order | Order of Saint Benedict |
| Established | 1889 |
| Mother house | St. Meinrad Archabbey, Spencer County, Indiana (founded 1854) |
| Diocese | Archdiocese of New Orleans |
| Abbot | Rt. Rev. Justin Brown, O.S.B. |
| Site | |
| Location | Saint Benedict, Louisiana, USA |
| Coordinates | 30°31′36″N 90°06′48″W / 30.526784°N 90.113454°WCoordinates: 30°31′36″N 90°06′48″W / 30.526784°N 90.113454°W |
| Public access | Yes |
| Website | www |
St. Joseph Benedictine Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey located in Saint Benedict, Louisiana within the Swiss-American Congregation of Benedictine Monasteries. The nearest city to the abbey is Covington, Louisiana the parish seat of St. Tammany Parish, part of the New Orleans metropolitan area.
St. Joseph Abbey was founded in 1889 by a group of monks from St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. These monks from Indiana traveled to Louisiana at the invitation of the Most Reverend Francis Janssens to form a College Seminary for training local vocations. Up until this time the diocese of New Orleans was being staffed by foreign pastors and was in desperate need for native born priests. St. Benedict, Louisiana was not the first choice for the establishment of a monastery and seminary college. The traveling monks from St. Meinrad Abbey originally chose a spot of land consisting of seventeen hundred acres located in Ponchatoula, Louisiana near Baton Rouge. The monks arrived to this location in 1889 and founded a monastery and seminary. They named the original establishment Gessen. After just a few years at this location the monks encountered many hardships including unworkable land, and illness caused by mosquitoes. In 1902 the monks decided to relocate the monastery and seminary to a former rice plantation at St. Benedict, Louisiana near Covington north of New Orleans. The monks changed the name of the monastery and seminary from Gessen to St. Joseph. The present location of St. Joseph Abbey occupies a total of 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) of piney wooded land.
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