It is run independently of the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama by the Benedictine monks of St. Bernard Abbey, located on the same campus.

Colonel John G. Cullmann, a German immigrant founded the town of Cullman in 1873.

Benedictine Monks came to the city from Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in the 1880s.

A number of these monks had come from Bavaria, in order to serve this German-speaking Catholic community.

[4] In 1891, they also started St. Bernard College on the monastery grounds, educating boys from grades 6-12.