Saint Meinrad Archabbey

In eighteen fifty-four, Benedictine monks from Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland arrived in the forested hills of Spencer County, Indiana, answering a plea for German-speaking priests to serve Catholic settlers in the area. The monastery they planted became Saint Meinrad Archabbey, named for the ninth-century Swiss hermit monk who gave the Swiss mother house its name. Today it is one of only two archabbeys in the United States and one of eleven in the world, a rare rank recognizing size, age, and influence.

The monks founded a school almost immediately; it soon offered undergraduate philosophy and theology, and that mission of forming Catholic priests has continued unbroken for more than a hundred and seventy years. The sandstone church towers still rise above the surrounding southern Indiana hills, largely as they looked when the first Swiss monks arrived.