The Monks and the Modernist: What the Benedictines Built at Collegeville

Marcel Breuer would have been proud. So would Baldwin Dworschak. And maybe even St. Benedict as well. Breuer, the New York Bauhaus-trained architect, and Dworschak, the far-sighted abbot of a Benedictine monastery in rural Minnesota, were the central figures in a unique collaboration that produced one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century religious architecture, the acclaimed St. John’s Abbey and University Church.

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St. John’s Abbey Breuer Church at 50

“The church is the house of God; in the midst of a world filled with the powers of evil, it is a place where God reigns supreme. The church is the house of God’s people, a place open to all where the faithful gather for prayer. The church is the place of sacrifice; the object in the church most worthy of veneration is the altar, which is the symbol of Christ.” — from the 1961 consecration

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