For nearly 70 years, people from around the world visited St. Benedict’s Monastery in Old Snowmass, a place many called “a sanctuary,” “a sacred valley” and “much more than just a church.”
Located in the Capitol Creek valley halfway between Aspen and Basalt, the Catholic Church’s monastery and ranch served as a home for Trappist monks who separated themselves from the world to worship, pray, meditate and contemplate in an idyllic setting in the Colorado Rockies.
All that ended last Sunday, when the few remaining monks held the final public Mass, attended by an overflow crowd of about 250 people. The monastery and ranch were sold last month to Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a leading software and technology company based in Denver. The $120 million purchase price includes 3,700 acres, water rights and the monastery compound.
The monks vacated the property this past week, and the monastery was closed. The most recent abbot, Father Charles Albanese, will be splitting time between Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Oregon and Santa Rita Abbey in Arizona. Father Ed Hoffman will move to St. Joseph’s Monastery in Massachusetts. Brother Raymond Roberts will remain in a caretaker/consultant capacity. A handful of other monks, who had arrived to help facilitate the sale, also departed.
Karp hasn’t publicly said what he will do with the property, except that he intends it to be one of his residences. He is an avid cross-country skier and will have ample acreage to explore.
With the St. Benedict’s monks aging and dwindling in number — from about 40 in their thriving years to less than 10 recently — they were unable to sustain their operations. The Trappist Order decided to put the property up for sale in 2023.
Besides St. Benedict’s, other monasteries or retreat centers have closed recently in Indiana and Pennsylvania, mainly due to the aging of members and an inability to recruit younger members.
Overall church attendance in the U.S. has been declining in recent years. During these troublesome and uncertain times, churchgoers are finding fewer options when they may, in fact, need more.
A Gallup poll shows that two decades ago, an average of 42% of U.S. adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week. A decade ago, the figure fell to 38%, and it is currently at 29%.
In 2023, the National Council of Churches predicted that about 100,000 churches would close throughout the U.S. in coming years. In October 2025, Axios reported that an unprecedented 15,000 churches could close that year alone, far more than the few thousand expected to open.
Among the reasons are the fact that younger generations aren’t attending church, and traditional brick-and-mortar churches are now facing competition from celebrity pastors live-streaming from their megachurches. And some churches still haven’t recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now that the St. Benedict’s sale is final, worshipers are wondering what to do next and where to go for spiritual fulfillment. I am not an especially religious person, but I’ve visited the monastery many times and can confirm that it was a special place.
Just being on the grounds, you feel different — exhilarated but serene. Gazing at the vast landscape and recalling the history of the place, I was often reminded of the movie “Field of Dreams” and how two baseball players amid the cornfields ask “Is this heaven?” St. Benedict’s may not be heaven, but a lot of visitors believe it’s as close as you can get. How sad that it’s only a memory now.
The property includes meadows, forests and creeks, surrounded by soaring peaks. Besides the monks’ residence and the chapel, there is a communal dining hall, a retreat center, guest cabins and several agricultural buildings.
The closing has left the many longtime, regular visitors to the monastery at a loss, even though the impending sale has been known for some time.
“There is this feeling of devastation,’’ said Grace Huffman, who lives nearby and whose family has been regular visitors since the 1960s. “The monastery anchored the valley. We were a community.
“The monastery really represented the church at its best. It’s definitely a sanctuary. There is this sense of sacredness. Just driving up there, it’s like going into another world. And you change when you’re in there.”
Under the Our Lady of Snowmass stained glass window, Fr. Charles Albanese celebrates the final Mass at St. Benedict’s Monastery. (Photo courtesy of Monica Costello)
Agustina Casal, a native of Argentina, said she has been overcome by “emptiness” since the sale.
“This place, to me, is addictive,” she said. “You feel like you need this place. I don’t sleep now. It’s like a death.
“We knew this was coming. They told us this place was going to die. This feels so hard. I mean, we’re lost.”
Marty and Claudia Canino and their family began visiting the monastery in 1960.
“We stayed at the Ranch House,” Marty recalled. “My father was in the food business, and he supplied food and gave the monks advice on how the kitchen should work. We kept up that relationship. We knew all the abbots and the monks. Then my father purchased a parcel of land from the monastery, where we built a house. We are fortunate that the view off our deck today still overlooks the monastery.
“The closing is going to leave a huge void. The community won’t be here anymore. But our memories will always be here.”
Jill Sabella worked at the monastery for years, doing housekeeping and cooking meals.
“When I started coming, I was so overwhelmed by the love,” she said. “It’s safe to say that we all feel very changed by coming here, because it’s just so welcoming, so open. And the monks – it’s not somebody preaching, it’s somebody teaching.”
Huffman remembers the monks, who mingled with visitors after Sunday Mass, as being “so intelligent and humble and spiritual and religious, and also funny. They really gave so much of themselves. They didn’t put themselves up on pedestals. The monastery was always so welcoming and open. You just felt very, very comfortable there.”
The monastery was inclusive. All faiths were welcome: Catholic or Protestant, atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu.
The notice board outside the chapel at St. Benedict’s Monastery announces the final Mass. The photo is of Abbot Joseph Boyle who led the community for 33 years before his passing in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Monica Costello)
“People come from all over the world to this place because it’s so special,” said Albanese, who delivered the final homily last Sunday. “We never reject anybody. There’s a no-judging zone here.”
Father Thomas Keating, a noted theologian and a leader in the centering prayer movement, was among the monastery’s most famous residents.
Father Joseph Boyle entered the order right out of high school in 1959 and then served as abbot for 33 years, from 1985 until his death in 2018. He built the Retreat House in 1995, as well as eight cabins, called hermitages, for those seeking quiet refuge during retreats, and built an infirmary for aging and ailing monks in 2000. Boyle became, for many, the beloved face of the monastery.
He and Keating died four days apart in October 2018, and both are buried on the monastery grounds.
Monks from St. Joseph’s in Massachusetts began building St. Benedict’s in 1956, using draft horses and hand tools.
“This is spectacular craftsmanship,” said worshiper Curt Carpenter. “There’s not a crack in the floor of this entire building. And what kind of people built these arches and windows without modern equipment?”
Keating, the newly appointed superior of the community, arrived with several other monks in 1958 and moved into the new green brick building.
As part of the Cistercian tradition, the monks led a life of prayer and manual labor. For St. Benedict’s, that meant cattle ranching in the early years, then raising chickens and selling eggs to local restaurants and groceries, then marketing their popular “Monastery Cookies” — all while hosting retreats for groups and individuals looking for silence and contemplation in a sacred space. Recently, they leased some of their land to neighboring ranchers.
The St. Benedict’s Monastery cemetery with the gravestones of monks from the community, as seen in 2018. The new owner has promised to allow family members visitation privileges. (Photo courtesy of Monica Costello)
“To me, the monastery meant hope, serenity, contemplation, just being able to get away from all the turmoil in the world,” Huffman said. “There are things I really appreciate about the Catholic Church, but there are problems, too.”
Asked how she planned to satisfy her spiritual needs now, she said, “I am not going to the parish church, I’ll tell you that. I don’t know. I’m used to doing my morning meditation and some studying and things like that.”
But she will greatly miss the community that formed among St. Benedict’s attendees.
“Some people are making an effort to stay connected,” she said. “We’ll see. But the monks held the community together, and now you start to lose that center.”
Casal estimates there are 40 to 50 monastery attendees who may try to form a community.
“There’s a church that is non-denominational in Aspen,” she said. “And the priest came here the other day to vespers and offered to do a Mass for us – not a Catholic Mass, something different, but there’s going to be communion and meditation. That’s one idea.”
St. Benedict’s Monastery 1987. (Photo by Fr. Joseph Boyle O.S.C.O./St. Benedict’s Archives)
As for the future and whether major changes may be upcoming that would alter the character of the property, she added, “Right now, I am praying for the owner.”
John Mossman is a former Denver Post copy editor and business reporter who previously was an Associated Press sports writer and editor in Denver for 33 years.
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