Mass & Service Times
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This church belongs to a religious community — a monastery, friary, convent or retreat centre — rather than to a parish. Many such churches are open to everyone; check with the community before travelling.
About Glenstal Abbey Church
History
The Barringtons, a family of landowners and baronets, built the castle at Glenstal in the 1830s. The family later left Ireland, and the castle was bought by a local priest, who invited monks from the Belgian Abbey of Maredsous to begin a community on the site in 1927.
The community is Roman Catholic and follows the Rule of Saint Benedict under an abbot. It belongs to the Congregation of the Annunciation, formerly known as the Belgian Congregation, which has monasteries in Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The building
The monastery is housed in a nineteenth-century castle in the Normanesque style, standing in five hundred acres of farmland, forest, lakes and streams. A monastic graveyard lies in the grounds, beside a garden cemetery laid out by the community for the interment of cremated remains, which overlooks the Chapel Lake. Places in the garden cemetery are marked with plaques of local grey granite.
