AVA, Mo. -- When the monks of Assumption Abbey could no longer support themselves by producing cement blocks, they decided to make fruitcake. Fifteen years and thousands of cakes later, there is no ...

2000-11-28 04:00:00 PDT Ava, Mo.-- On this autumn morning, when the chapel bell tolls, a moonlit mist shrouds the monks' cloister in the thick woods of the Ozarks. Just before the "Great Silence" ends ...

AVA, Mo. (AP) – Once the bane of pot-luck parties, the fruitcake has been turned into a sought-after treat by Trappist monks secluded in the Missouri Ozarks who some say bake cake that’s nothing short ...

In 2023, my wife Liz embarked on a self-guided spiritual retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Nelson County, Ky. She returned with an armful of books and souvenirs from the ...

In the late 1960s, a young NCR reporter named Colman McCarthy saw the emerging decline of American Trappist monasteries and offered a diagnosis: The monastic life is not active enough. Looking back ...