In 2021 the community numbered fifty-eight monks who celebrate the Eucharist and Liturgy of the Hours daily and who staff and administer Conception Seminary College, The Printery House, and the Abbey Guest Center.

James Power to minister to the spiritual needs of a colony of Irish and German settlers which he had established in northwest Missouri in 1858, prior to the Civil War.

Frowin Conrad, named Placid at birth, was born in Auw, Canton Argau, Switzerland, on 2 November 1833, the eldest of twelve children, eleven boys and one girl.

In the next seventeen years, he served as prefect and professor in Engelberg's school, held many of the major offices in the monastery (including the important post of novice-master), pastor of the monastery's parish, and chaplain to the nearby convent of Maria Richenbach.

These appointments witness the fact that he enjoyed the complete confidence of the abbot of Engelberg, Anselm Villiger.

Frowin founded the Benedictine monastery of New Engleberg at Conception, which was erected into an abbey in 1881.

During his boyhood he attended the Catholic school of his hometown, was confirmed in 1855, and later worked on the family farm.

The Mother General of the Sisters of Mercy at Ingenbohl, Canton Schwyz, employed him to work on the extensive farm of their convent.

When he was twenty-eight, he left Ingenbohl for Grafenort in Unterwalden to work on the estate belonging to the Abbey of Engelberg.

Frowin was influenced by the customs of the Beuronese foundations and Saint Meinrad Abbey in Indiana while Fr.

Adelhelm and another Engelberg monk left Conception on 1 June 1881 seeking a location for a new monastery.

In the Album Benedictum published for 1880 it was noted that the monks served the following parishes: one priest served the cathedral in St. Joseph, Missouri, one priest served Saint Columba Parish in Conception, Missouri (with its missions at Albany, Saint Patrick's, Dolorosa in Gentry County, and Guilford and Whitesfield in Worth County), and two priests served Saint Mary Parish in Maryville and its stations in Nodaway County at Barnard, Bolkow, Hopkins, Pickering, and Rosendale.

In 2019, Abbot Benedict Neenan, the monastery's abbot, unveiled a list of 8 monks who were credibly accused of committing acts of sex abuse while serving on behalf of Conception Abbey, seven of whom are dead and one removed from ministry.

[6][7] Abbot Benedict Neenan also issued an "unconditional apology to all victims and their families affected by the evil of clergy sexual abuse.”[8] The school was founded on 2 July 1886 and was called the College of New Engelberg with classes offered on the high school and junior college level.

Clarence Thomas studied to become a priest at the seminary in 1968, and in 1991 was named to the United States Supreme Court.

It began as an in-house publication effort in the 1930s, would expand to become Conception Abbey Press in the 1950s, and then would change its name to The Printery House in 1973.

[9] Source:[10] The Abbey Church of Conception was designed by Adrian Wewer, a Franciscan.

Having made the circuit of the monastery hallways, Mr. Jeffress returned to the basilica where he shot and killed himself.