PEOSTA — Every morning before the sun comes up, Brother Joseph is beginning his day. Brother Joseph, a Trappist Monk, is up by 4:30 a.m., heading out to start work in the New Melleray Abbey’s garden.

In 2023, my wife Liz embarked on a self-guided spiritual retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Nelson County. She returned with an armful of books and souvenirs from the ...

Brother Joseph Swedo was bent forward in his chair, his rugged hands folded delicately in his lap. As a monk at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, he maintains that Roman Catholic ...