Lake Elmo Carmelite founds Monastery in Wyoming

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Something is on the rise in Wyoming, and to many it’s more majestic than the state’s Rocky Mountains.

It’s the Catholic Church.

In 2006, the sparsely Catholic-populated state made headlines with the newly formed Wyoming Catholic College, an ambitious, 14-square-mile campus that will become just the second four-year college in Wyoming.

But there’s another, quieter community taking wing in the Cowboy State — the Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Founded just three years ago, the cloistered Carmelite monastery already has seven monks and several times that waiting to don the order’s habit and hard life.

So what’s going on in Wyoming?

“That’s something I’ve been wondering a lot about,” says Cheyenne Bishop David Ricken. “The Holy Spirit is blessing us. The Church in Wyoming is over 100 years old, and maybe it’s now time for Wyoming to start to grow and to have the full complement of what it takes to make the Church whole. Catholic education and contemplative houses of prayer, those two things have been lacking. But the Spirit is saying it’s time to grow these things in your own midst.”

The monastery is the inspiration of Father Daniel Mary of Jesus Crucified, M. Carm., previously novice master in the Carmelite Hermitage of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lake Elmo, Minn. Feeling called to found a new monastery in his native Wyoming, the 39-year-old Father Daniel Mary established contact with Bishop Ricken. [....Snip] Read More at the National Catholic Register

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