Category: Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire

The original Saint Benedict Center was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flourished in the 1940s and 50s. The founders relocated to Harvard (Still River) Massachusetts in 1958. In 1988, Brother Francis, Sister Marie Louise, and a handful of other religious moved from Bolton, Massachusetts to found Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire. The Center in Richmond is made up of a monastery of men, and convent of women, a school, and a chapel where the traditional rites of the Church are offered. It serves as the religious and cultural center of a Catholic community in the area.

The pieces in this section pertain to our work in and from Richmond.

Saint Benedict Center in the News

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RICHMOND, N.H. — Friday, June 25, 2010 — An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney has secured a $1.15 million settlement on behalf of Saint Benedict Center of Richmond in a lawsuit over the town’s unconstitutional zoning restrictions. The center contended officials singled it out for discrimination after certain officials expressed their view that the church’s moral positions on matters such as abortion and homosexual behavior are “abhorrent.”

The settlement payment–coming after two state court orders in favor of the church–marks one of the largest settlements in U.S. history involving the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects churches from unequal treatment in land use disputes with local governments. Continue reading →

Philosophy in Our School of Thought

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Speaking of the work of Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Francis often said, “We are three things at once: a crusade, a religious order, and a school of thought.” Usually, he would embellish this utterance with little summaries of each of the three. By crusade, he meant our two-fold apostolate for the conversion of America and the restoration of doctrinal sanity, beginning with that very fundamental dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. (We put the definite article and a capital C here: The Crusade.) By religious order, he meant our Congregation’s First and Second Orders… Continue reading →