City's first monastery in the works

Between taking communion and singing hymns at Mass, the worshippers at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church kneeled, their heads lowered, in silence.

Such calm is what the four friars of the Charlottesville church seek as they contemplate scripture and pray, but it is getting harder to obtain because of the cramped single-family house they live in on Alderman Road.

That will soon change. The church that serves many from the University of Virginia is planning to build a nearly 11,000-square-foot monastery, the St. Thomas Aquinas Priory, that will house at least six Dominican friars and is believed to be the first constructed monastery within city limits.

John Gorman of Gorman Architects, which is working with the church on the project, said the building is being designed to accommodate eight friars with expansion possibilities for 12, as the Alderman Road church’s congregation balloons.

St. Thomas Aquinas will start with six friars in its new home, according to church leaders and those involved with the project.

“There’s just no more room,” Gorman said. “Trying to adapt a single-family [home] into a monastery just wasn’t working.”

The church has submitted its first site plans of the monastery to the city’s Department of Neighbor-hood Development Servi-ces and the plans are currently being reviewed. If approved, the project will be built at 327 and 331 Kent Road, down the street from the church.

According to a Web site specifically devoted to the future monastery and its fundraising campaign, the church has raised $920,000 of the $4.6 million goal.

Monasteries are rare in the Charlottesville area, but others include the Our Lady of the Angels monastery in Crozet — where nuns are known for making Gouda cheese.

Father Joseph Scordo, one of the friars at St. Thomas Aquinas, said the church’s order is founded in preaching but also has a strong basis in study and contemplation through prayer. To do that, there are certain amenities the church’s leaders require, such as a place to study and pray and spaces where those in the monastery can have adequate social interaction.

Right now, Scordo says, the friars’ home on Alderman Road has little privacy. They use a converted bedroom for a chapel. Multiple bookcases with books for research are squished inside a hallway. The bedrooms are also very small, he said.

“If someone sneezes in one room, you could say God bless you in the next,” Scordo said.

Those involved with the project say St. Thomas Aquinas only had one friar and a congregation of fewer than 1,000 when it began. Today, Gorman said, the church is made up of 2,300 families and more than 4,500 students. If it keeps growing, the need for more friars is also likely to accelerate.

Connor Breed, a third-year UVa student, said he has been to most Mass times on Sundays, and “the church is usually full for most of those.” Breed has attended St. Thomas Aquinas since he started at the university.

The new, two-floor facility will have bigger spaces for a library and a chapel so laypeople can also come to pray, Scordo said.

“We’re hoping that it’ll become a center for more prayer and academic and religious life here in town,” he added.

Construction could begin as early as next spring and would take roughly 12 to 18 months to be completed.