[8] The founders originally left Hungary to avoid oppression soon after Communist officials nationalized Catholic schools in 1948.

[5][6] On the night of 11 July 1950, word came to the abbey in Csorna that the police would arrive the next day to arrest the confreres and suppress the community.

Several of them arrived in New York in 1952, from which they made their way west where they were welcomed by the Abbey of St. Norbert in De Pere, Wisconsin, with whom they lived for several years, saving money to begin their own monastery.

[1] At the invitation of Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles, they first moved to Santa Ana, California, in 1957 and taught at Mater Dei High School,[6] establishing a monastic community the next year.

[11] He was elected for a life-time term as abbot with a mandatory retirement age of 75 years on 27 June 1995 and received the abbatial blessing on 15 September 1995.

In a ceremony at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Fresno, the first nine sisters made their solemn profession as members of the newly established Canonry of the Bethlehem Priory of St. Joseph, in the hands of the Norbertine Abbot General, Thomas Handgratinger.

[15] In a statement on 1 March 2022, the fathers of St Michael Abbey announced plans to establish a community in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and the creation of the Evermode Institute, a center for Catholic spiritual and intellectual formation.

[20] In August 2021, it was announced that the confreres would be caring for the spiritual needs of pilgrims at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, replacing the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Following solemn profession all an additional year of studies in Rome while living at the Norbertine Generalate and pursuing courses in pastoral theology at the Angelicum, the pontifical university under the direction of the Dominican Order.

[24] Priests of the Abbey serve in high schools, parishes, offer retreats and spiritual direction.