Trappist Monk Receives the COVID vacine

One of the Trappist monks at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga., receives the COVID-19 vaccine. / GPB News

A community of 28 Trappist monks in Conyers, Ga., is emerging from a yearlong lockdown thanks to the coronavirus vaccine. In February, the monks at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit received their second dose of the Moderna jab.  

Many of the monks are elderly and at higher risk of dying of COVID-19. They’ve had no contact with outsiders since March 2020 when Abbot Augustine Myslinski, of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, made the difficult decision to shutter operations.  

“Our seniors, we love them," Abbot Augustine said. "We just love them. And we wanted to protect them."

While monastery residents live a cloistered life of poverty, silence and prayer, they also interact with the public. During a typical year, 80,000 visitors of all faiths come to the monastery for multi-day retreats, attend mass, sing and pray right alongside the monks, picnic and stroll the more than 2,000 acres of rural landscape.  

Creating a virus-free “bubble” inside the monastery meant sending staff and volunteers home, closing the gift shop and retreat house, and ending public church services. For the past year, no outsiders have entered any of the monastery buildings.  

Church at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit

The chapel at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. / GPB News

With the availability of a vaccine, Abbot Augustine is grateful to the world’s scientists for working to save millions of lives.   

“What faith says to science is, ‘serve humanity,’” he said. “And I think science does in so many beautiful ways. We're seeing it right now with the vaccine.”  

GPB’s Rickey Bevington visits a monastic community in Conyers, Ga., as its residents get their second dose of coronavirus vaccine.

While some coronavirus vaccines are developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses, that wasn’t the case for either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs.  

The Vatican has assured the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Roman Catholics that getting vaccinated against coronavirus is a “duty to pursue the common good.”  

Brother Callistus Crichlow, OCSO, says there are no plans to reopen to the public until vaccines are more widely available.  

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has said all adults in Georgia will potentially have access the vaccine starting April 1.  

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