As the tours come in each day, some of the people who work at Trappist Caskets believe their mission is much deeper than a typical business. “Sometimes it’s like they find us and I think it’s the work ...

(RNS) — The Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey have always given away child caskets. Now they're offering adult caskets to people in need. (RNS) — They live secluded lives in a stone abbey near a ...

The walnut planks used to make Caroline Found’s casket grew for 120 years in a quiet northeast Iowa forest. Tucked away behind a hulking limestone monastery, the tree was prayed over by the monks of ...

Stepping out of their usually reclusive lifestyle, Trappist monks at an Iowa abbey plan to sell their handcrafted wooden caskets to the public for the first time since the retreat was founded in 1849.

Various images of monks and caskets photographed at the Trappist Casket manufacturing facility at the New Melleray Abbey near Peosta, Iowa. (Credit: Mark Hirsch.) Listen Honoring a departed loved one ...

Trappists, Sam Mulgrew tells me, “are very land-based.” We’re sitting in the office of Trappist Caskets, just a short walk from New Melleray Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa. Sam is a layman, not a monk, but he ...

All told, Trappist Caskets produces an average of 35 caskets a week. Although not all of the monks came to the abbey with prior woodworking skills, they and the new monks joining their ranks "are ...

Mondays are often hectic in the casket business, and today is no exception. By 10:00 A.M., the company has one premium black walnut casket, a shaped oak and a shaped pine to get out the door. Pickup ...

Every other Thursday at about 4:10 in the morning, the monks of New Melleray Abbey stand in a dark church, and, following a moment of silence, listen to the lone voice of our abbot offer the prayer ...

Trappist Caskets offers two models -- simple and premium. Simple caskets are smooth on all sides. Premium caskets feature complex raised-panel joinery and shaped lids. Both come in two shapes -- ...

They live secluded lives in a stone abbey near a privately owned forest in a rural part of eastern Iowa. But the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey are not closed off from the world's troubles. Last ...