Cistercian Sisters celebrate the 50th anniversary of Santa Rita Abbey

Fifty years ago, six Cistercian Sisters (a.k.a. Trappistines) answered the call to come to the Diocese of Tucson on February 6, 1972. Fifty years ago, Santa Rita Abbey was founded in Sonoita, AZ. 

All are welcome and invited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Santa Rita Abbey. Join us on Saturday, April 22 at a 10:30am Mass with Bishop Edward Weisenburger. Visiting abbots and abbesses of other Cistercian monasteries in the American region will also be coming. Following Mass will be a light lunch and tours of the monastery. Please RSVP to Mother Victoria at sracommty@gmail.com or call the monastery at 520-455-5595.

We are members of the international Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, a.k.a. the Trappists. Our vocation is to a life of prayer, manual labor, and lectio divina, lived in a community of sisters within a monastic enclosure. It is a life-long response to the love of God, and a concrete way to live out a relationship of ever-deepening personal love with the Lord Jesus. 

While the origins of the Cistercians go back to 11th-century France, and the reform that would eventually be known as Trappist dates from the 17th and 18th centuries, the more immediate origin of our monastery of Santa Rita has its roots in the 1967 ordination to the priesthood of a young man named Thomas Rice. 

During his seminary days the young Tom had frequented Mt. St. Mary’s Abbey, the Trappistine monastery in Wrentham, MA. Fr. Tom was destined for the Diocese of Tucson, and almost as soon as he arrived in Arizona, he began urging the abbess, Mother Angela, to make a foundation out west. Tucson’s Bishop Francis Green welcomed the idea, and after an extensive search, suitable property was found in 1971. The property was purchased, six nuns were selected to be foundresses, and on February 6, 1972, M. Angela brought the group to their new home: a four-room ranch house on 120 acres in the Sonoita grasslands southeast of Tucson. 

Mother Cecile, the new superior, and Sisters Clare, Anita, Beverly, Celestine, and Victoria promptly settled in and began living the monastic life. Over the course of the next six years, the new community prayed and worked, welcoming visitors, making new friends, building a chapel and reception area on the south side of the original ranch house and a dormitory wing on the west, and putting in a large vegetable garden down the hill to the north. To earn their living, the sisters fashioned crosses and other small pieces out of stained glass and created a series of hand-painted ceramic Kino Mission mugs. 

Meanwhile, right from the start, interested young women applied to the community, and gradually there were postulants, novices, and junior-professed sisters augmenting the original group. By the end of the 1970’s, needing a better source of income for their growing community, the sisters started a new venture, the baking of 100% whole wheat altar breads, and thus Cistercian Altar Breads was born. The sisters’ customer base grew slowly but steadily over the ensuing years to include over three hundred Catholic parishes across the US. 

On September 14, 1978, the six-year-old foundation was raised to the rank of an autonomous major priory. Bishop Green presided at the ceremonies witnessed by Rev. M. Angela of Mt. St. Mary’s and many other monks, nuns, and friends of the community. The six foundresses held an election that same day to choose Mother Cecile as their first titular prioress.

Mother Cecile led the community from 1972 to 1990, followed by Mother Beverly from 1990 to 2000. In 2000, we elected Mother Miriam, a sister from our motherhouse, as our third prioress. She served the community for twelve years, retiring in 2012. Our fourth prioress, Mother Vicki is now in her eleventh year of office. 

We never had a master building plan, but instead, as the need arose, and as funds were raised, we added on here and there: a new church in 1983, an altar bread bakery building in 1984. We extended the dormitory in 1988. Our present retreat house was opened to the public in 1995. In 2006 we embarked upon an extensive remodeling project which included adding work offices and art studios onto the west end of the altar bread bakery. In 2018, a more permanent family guest house replaced the double-wide trailer in use since the 1970’s. Over the years we’ve developed quite a talent for moving furniture and books and re-purposing the older parts of the monastery!

In five decades, dozens of young women have come to try their vocation to the Cistercian life. Many of them proved to have another call, but a core group has formed over the years, women of faith who, like the desert willow and mesquite trees, have sunk a tap root deep into the ground of their hearts, deep down into the life-giving waters of the presence of God hidden within. You can see it by the joy on their faces!


Two of the original foundresses remain: Sister Clare who is 95 years old and celebrating her 70th jubilee in vows; and prioress Mother Victoria who is currently celebrating her 50th jubilee!

 
Please join us in giving thanks to God for our fifty years in the Diocese of Tucson and for all the love and support of our benefactors and friends over these many years! "O give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!" (Ps 136:1).

Women who are discerning a religious vocation are invited to our next Monastic Experience Weekend, October 6-9, 2023. Contact Sr. Pam at santaritavocations@gmail.com or call her at 520-455-5595 if you are interested in attending.



Bishop Francis Green blessing the monastery on July 4, 1973.


Six founding sisters with Rev. Mother Angela arriving in Tucson on February 6 1972.


View of monastery in Sonoita and the Santa Rita Mountains.