Holy Cross Abbey

 christianity, monastery, Order of Cistercians, catholicism

Cistercian community at Holy Cross Abbey, Whitland was originally founded at Stapehill, Dorset in October 1802, by a small group of nuns, who had fled the horror of the French Revolution, seeking asylum in England. However, the property in Dorset, including farm and farm-land, became too big for the present community to manage and in 1989 it was sold and they moved to Whitland in 1991, across the valley from where Bernard of Clairvaux had founded a monastery in 1141 and so they pick up the threads of Cistercian monastic tradition in a land of ancient Christian faith.Present-day Cistercian Community at Holy Cross Abbey seeks to live the Cistercian charism in the C21st. It is a life lived in community, a life of prayer, nurtured by daily manual work and lectio divina. Lectio divinia is a meditative way of reading, listening to and pondering upon the word of God.