Victoria Young on the modern creation of Saint John's Abbey Church

Saint John's Abbey chapel
The lay brothers' chapel dedicated to Saint Benedict.
Courtesy of Olga Ivanova
'Saint John's Abbey Church'
'Saint John's Abbey Church' by Victoria M. Young
Book cover courtesy of publisher

The 1950s was a time of great liturgical change in the Catholic Church. It was also a transformative era for architecture, with modern designs springing up in the post-war building boom.

So when the monks of the Abbey of Saint John the Baptist set about building a new church on their campus in Collegeville, Minn., they decided to embrace the changing times. Working with an untested religious designer, Marcel Breuer, they created a modernist sacred space with attention to detail from floor to furniture, to altar, to ceiling.

Victoria Young, University of St. Thomas art history chair, joins The Daily Circuit about her new book "Saint John's Abbey Church: Marcel Breuer and the Creation of a Modern Sacred Space."

The Abbey streams services from inside the church, including the Christmas Eve Vigil at 7:30pm on Dec. 24.

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