Welcome to our Community

Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey is a monastery of Cistercian (Trappist) nuns. A community of Roman Catholic women, we try to follow Jesus Christ through a life of prayer, silence, simplicity, and ordinary work.

Our rule of life, after the Gospel, is the Rule of St Benedict. Our Order is wholly ordered to contemplation.

Seven times a day we gather in the abbey church to sing God’s praise. We offer hospitality by inviting you to join us for liturgy, to breathe in the peace of our grounds, or to come away and rest in one of our retreat houses.

Our monastery is situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River south of Dubuque, Iowa. We earn our living through the Monastery Candy we produce in a workshop on our property and sell by mail. The beautiful land God has committed to our stewardship includes many acres of managed woodlands as well as grazing pasture and cropland.