ABBEY OF VIBOLDONE

It was founded in 1176 and completed in 1348 by the Humiliati, a religious order made up of monks, nuns and lay people who, around the current church, led a life of prayer and work, in particular by making woolen cloths and cultivating the fields with absolutely innovative processing systems. After the suppression of the Humiliati by Saint Charles Borromeo, the abbey passed to the Olivetan Benedictines, who were subsequently suppressed by the Austrian government and forced to abandon the abbey. Inserted in the spiritual tradition of Benedictine monasticism (Benedict of Norcia, 480-547), the Community of the Benedictine nuns of Viboldone rooted its first origins in 1936, in Montefiolo and at the Roman catacombs of Priscilla, around her mother Margherita Maria Marchi (1901-1956). The intuition that animated the first sisters was the search for a female monasticism, inspired by Christian origins. The first nucleus of 27 sisters, a pilgrim through the upheavals of the years of the Second World War, landed in Viboldone on 1 May 1941, the date of ecclesial recognition of the Community, through Card. Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster. The Community received recognition as an aggregation from the Benedictine Confederation in March 1966. Even Cardinal Archbishop G. B. Montini, thanks to his tenacious work as a pastor, officially recognized the stability of the Benedictine monastic community in Viboldone, deeming it appropriate to build a monastery building more suitable for the numerous monastic presence. Viboldone thus regained its original destination as a “monastic village”.