Swiss Congregation

The congregation was founded, at the urging of the Papal legate to Switzerland, in 1602,[1] with a significant reform agenda.

All were dissolved as a consequence of the French Revolution in 1798, but were restored by Napoleonic decree in 1803, with the exception of St. Gall, where the Prince-Abbot refused to make the necessary political concessions.

The outlook for Swiss Roman Catholics during the "Kulturkampf" was so bleak that Einsiedeln and Engelberg began a programme of establishing new religious houses in the United States of America so that the remaining monasteries and nunneries in Switzerland would have a refuge if they were all exiled.

Eventually the crisis passed, but the new foundations took on a life of their own as the Swiss-American Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation.

Political changes outside Switzerland brought the addition of Marienberg Abbey in South Tyrol, which transferred from the Austrian Congregation in 1931.