Service. Education. Hospitality.

Our Benedictine monks have served St. Bede Academy and the Illinois Valley area of North Central Illinois since 1891.

Welcome to St. Bede Abbey

St. Bede Abbey was established in 1891 and operates St. Bede Academy, a co-educational Catholic high school serving both day and boarding students.

We follow a simple and austere way of life that is marked by obedience, silence, humility, simplicity, prayerfulness, work, patience, perseverance, community, and fraternal charity.

Our Mission

Our primary purpose is simply to seek God by listening carefully to his word throughout our lives and responding to it with obedience and generosity. Unlike the majority of Christians, who follow Christ through marriage, family, and work in secular life, we seek to achieve the same goal of holiness by another path, that of withdrawal into relative solitude and the practice of celibacy to follow a simple and austere way of life that is marked by obedience, silence, humility, simplicity, prayerfulness, work, patience, perseverance in the same community, and fraternal charity.

We wish to contribute to the building up of the local and universal church through bearing witness to Christian values by our way of life and by helping others directly through hospitality, education, pastoral ministry, and other forms of service that are compatible with community life. One of these services is the ownership and operation of St. Bede Academy, a day school for young men and women of the locality in grades 9 through 12.

From the Abbot

“Thank you for praying with us, supporting us, and being an essential part of our community at St. Bede’s.”

— Abbot Michael Calhoun, O.S.B.

Abbot Michael Calhoun

Father Patrick Fennell

Abbot Emeritus Philip Davey

Subprior Dominic Garramone

Brother Luke McLachlan

Father Ronald Margherio

Father Gregory Jarzombek

Brother Nathaniel Grossmann

Brother David Freeman