Sri Lanka’s leading prelate has founded the first Christian monastery in his largely Buddhist nation. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo, who served as secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments from 2005 to 2009, has erected a diocesan institute of contemplative life whose initial members are one Austrian and three Sri Lankans from Heiligenkreuz Abbey in Austria.

The Cistercian abbey, renowned for its fidelity to the Magisterium and its celebration of the ordinary form of the sacred liturgy in Latin, has more monks than at any time since the Baroque era. If the new diocesan institute succeeds, it will one day become part of the Cistercian order, according to Heiligenkreuz’s abbot.