MUENSTER VIA CLUNY

The history of St. Peter's Abbey in Muenster goes back to the 1890s when St. Vincent's Abbey founded a priory at Cluny, near Wetaug, Illinois, about 340 miles south of Chicago. Under the leadership of Prior Oswald Moosmueller, the monastic community survived considerable hardships. However, the death of Father Oswald in 1901 and deteriorating financial conditions eventually led the priory to accept an invitation in 1902 to transfer to Saskatchewan.

Led by Prior Alfred Mayer and renewed by manpower from St. John's Abbey, the Cluny community came to Muenster in 1903. The foundation was renamed St. Peter's in honor of Abbot Peter Engel, then abbot of St. John's Abbey. The monks celebrated the first Mass in the vicinity of Muenster on May 21,1903, feast of the Ascension.

Benedictine monks were involved in the settling of this area from the beginning. Father Bruno Doerfler of St. John's Abbey had accompanied H. J. Haskamp, Moritz Hoeschen and Henry Hoeschen of Minnesota in August, 1902 in a search for good farmland in Western Canada, available for $10 a homestead. Haskamp and Hoeschen formed the German American Land Company and bought 100,000 acres of land to sell to settlers. To attract immigrants to the new colony, the Catholic Settlement Society was formed in St. Paul, Minnesota. The promise that Benedictine monks would be in their midst was one of the chief factors in motivating immigrants to settle in St. Peter's Colony.

Reprinted with permission of Diocese of Muenster, 1996
Box 10, Muenster, SK., S0K 2Y0

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