Our Lady of the Rock's roots reach far back into European history, back more than 1500 years to the time of St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine religious order and the author of the Rule of St. Benedict, the primary guide for the life of many religious orders.

In the 7th century, the Abbey of Notre Dame de Jouarre, located northeast of Paris, was founded as a Benedictine Monastery for nuns in the traditions of St. Benedict. Centuries later, in 1936, Vera Duss, an American who had lived in France most of her life, received her medical degree from the Sorbonne and almost immediately afterward stunned her family and colleagues by entering the Abbey of Jouarre, becoming Mother Benedict Duss, O.S.B. Soon afterward World War II had cast its irrevocable shadow on the monastery. When the town was seized by the German army and the Abbey itself occupied by Nazi officers, Mother Benedict's presence in the monastery became a danger for her and for her community. As an American she was an enemy of the Germans, and yet as a doctor she was needed by both armies to take care of the wounded.

Mother Benedict spent many days in semi-seclusion in the 11th-century bell tower of the abbey, avoiding any attention that would put her community in jeopardy. On August 27, 1944 she was in the tower, looking from the window, when the nuns first caught sight of an advancing army. Their liberation was at hand. Who were the soldiers? The French Resistance? The English? No. As the undaunted men marched relentlessly forward, black with dust and unswerving in their purpose, Mother Benedict caught sight of an American flag unfurling from the back of a military truck. They were Americans, and as she would later find out, men of the 3rd Army under the leadership of General George S. Patton, Jr. The spirit of self-sacrifice communicated by the men infused her with an overwhelming response of gratitude to God and the need to give her life in return, blood for blood.

She resolved to make a monastic foundation in the United States, no matter what the cost.

The Abbey of Regina Laudis was the outcome of this resolve and was eventually founded in 1946 in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Having been born out of the devastation of World War II, the Abbey of Regina Laudis continues to regard its mission as a call to spiritual combat with the forces of chaos and evil, relying on the one weapon that cannot be overcome, the prayer of hearts bonded in Eucharistic love.

Our Lady of the Rock began in 1977 when three nuns from the Abbey of Regina Laudis, Bethlehem, CT, arrived to establish a monastery on Shaw Island, where Henry Ellis had donated 300 acres of land and its buildings to Regina Laudis for the purpose of establishing a Benedictine community. Through these years we have grown in numbers and established firm roots here.

In 1985 a representative from the Vatican elevated the community to a Priory and named Reverend Mother Therese Critchley, one of the three founders, as our first Prioress. After a few years of support from Regina Laudis, we became self-sufficient financially, but we still maintain firm fraternal ties with the Abbey.

To read more about Mother Abbess and the history and spirituality of the Abbey of Regina Laudis and of Our Lady of the Rock, please see the recent book Mother Benedict by Antoinette Bosco.

Text about Abbey of Notre Dame de Jouarre, Mother Abbess and Regina Laudis was borrowed from the Regina Laudis Website.