Christminster is a western-rite monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), established in Rhode Island in 1993 with the blessing of His Grace Bishop (now Metropolitan) Hilarion, then Bishop of Manhattan, who authorized our present Abbot, the Rt. Rev. Dom James M. Deschene (formerly the Prior of the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Royal), to continue the western-rite mission of Mount Royal in a new monastery under the title of Christ the Saviour Monastery.

In 2008, through the generosity of a major benefactor, Christminster moved to Ontario, Canada, into a monastery providing accommodations for monks and guests, with refectory, library, office and work space, and a monastic church in which the Liturgy of the Mass and the Hours are celebrated in full on behalf of and for the whole Church.

We follow the Holy Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (d. 547 A.S.), considered the father of Orthodox monasticism in the West. This Rule draws upon the wisdom of earlier monastic elders in Egypt, Cappadocia, Italy, and Gaul. The life envisioned in the Rule is one balanced between worship, study, contemplation, and work. Scholars of religion and culture have long recognized the deep wisdom, psychological insight, and profound influence of St. Benedict’s Rule not only on monasticism, but on all of western civilization.