Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the mendicant Order of Friars Minor, as painted by El Greco.

Catholic religious order

Catholic religious orders are one of two types of religious institutes (‘Religious Institutes’, cf. canons 573–746), the major form of consecrated life in the Roman Catholic Church. They are organizations of laity and/or clergy who take solemn vows (in contrast to the simple vows taken by the members of religious congregations) and who live a common life following a religious rule or constitution under the leadership of a religious superior. According to the Annuario Pontificio, there are four branches of religious orders:

* Monastic orders: orders founded by monks or nuns who live and work in a monastery and recite the divine office.
* Mendicant orders: orders founded by friars or nuns who live from alms, recite the divine office, and have active participation in apostolic endeavors.
* Canons Regulars: orders founded by canons and canonesses regular who recite the divine office and generally are in charge of a parish.
* Clerks Regulars: orders founded by priests who are also religious men with vows and have a very active apostolic live.

Their intention is to imitate Jesus more closely, mainly, but not exclusively, by observing evangelical chastity, poverty, and obedience, which are the three evangelical counsels of perfection (cf. canons 599–601). They bind themselves to this form of living by taking public vows in accordance with the norms of church law. They may additionally profess to obey certain guidelines for living, since each order has its peculiar charism. Religious vows are to be distinguished from Holy Orders, the sacrament which bishops, priests, and deacons receive. Hence, members of religious orders are not part of the hierarchy, unless they are also ordained priests or deacons (sometimes referred to as “priest-monks” or “hieromonks” – a term more commonly found among the Orthodox than among Roman Catholics).

Religious orders only differ from religious congregations in the nature of their vows (solemn vs. simple), since today much of their way of live and apostolates don’t differ much. Even though the names are used interchangeably, technically, they are not the same.

Religious rules

Religious orders generally follow one of the four great religious rules: Rule of St Basil, Rule of St. Benedict, Rule of St. Augustine, and the Rule of St. Francis.

For example, a large number of the religious orders in the Catholic Church ( Benedictines, Trappists, Cistercians, etc.) observe the Rule of St Benedict, a collection of precepts for what is called contemplative religious life; others follow the Rule of St Augustine that stress self-denial, moderation, and care for those in need, whereas the Rule of St Basil, one of the earliest rules for Christian religious living, tends to be followed by monastic communities of the Orthodox Church. In addition, the individual Orders have their own regulations for the practical living out of their chosen Rule so as to be able to serve their own Order’s charism more fully.

Authority structure

A Religious Order is characterized by an authority structure where a superior general has jurisdiction over the order’s dependent communities. An exception is the Order of St Benedict which is not a religious order in this technical sense, because it has a system of “independent houses”, meaning that each abbey is autonomous. However, the Constitutions governing the order’s global “independent houses” were approved by the pope. Likewise, according to rank and authority, the abbot primate’s “position with regard to the other abbots [throughout the world] is to be understood rather from the analogy of a primate in a hierarchy than from that of the general of an order like the Dominicans and Jesuits.”

History

Roots in Egypt and Syriac- and Greek-speaking East

From the earliest times there were probably individual hermits who lived a life in isolation in imitation of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. They have left no confirmed archaeological traces and only hints in the written record. Communities of virgins who had consecrated themselves to Christ are found at least as far back as the 2nd century. There were also individual ascetics, known as the “devout”, who usually lived not in the deserts but on the edge of inhabited places, still remaining in the world but practicing asceticism and striving for union with God, although extreme ascetism such as encratism was regarded as suspect by the Church.

Paul of Thebes (fl. 3rd cent.), commemorated in the writings of St Jerome, is regarded as the first Christian hermit in Egypt, his withdrawal into the desert apparently having been prompted by the persecution of the Christians at the time. Saint Anthony was the first to leave the world specifically to live in the desert as a monk; St Athanasius speaks of him as an anchorite. In upper Egypt, sometime around 323 AD, Saint Pachomius decided to organize his disciples into a form of community in which they lived in individual huts or rooms (cellula in Latin), but worked, ate, and worshipped in shared space. Guidelines for daily life were drawn up (a monastic ‘rule’); and several monasteries were founded, nine for men and two for women. This method of monastic organization is called cenobitic or “community-based”. Towards the end of his life St Pachomius was therefore not only the abbot of a monastery but also the head of an entire order of monasteries.

The Greeks (e.g. St Basil the Great of Cappadocian Caesarea) and the Syriac-speaking east have their own monastic traditions (e.g. St Ephrem of Nisibis and Edessa).

Gaul

The earliest forms of monasticism in Western Europe involved figures such as Martin of Tours, who after serving in the Roman legions converted to Christianity and established a hermitage near Milan. He then moved on to Poitiers where he gathered a community around his hermitage. In 372 he was called to become Bishop of Tours, where he established a monastery at Marmoutiers on the opposite bank of the Loire River. His monastery was laid out as a colony of hermits rather than as a single integrated community.

John Cassian began his monastic career at a monastery in Palestine and Egypt around 385 to study monastic practice there. In Egypt he had been attracted to the isolated life of hermits, which he considered the highest form of monasticism, yet the monasteries he founded were all organized monastic communities. About 410 he established two monasteries near Marseilles, one for men, one for women. In time these attracted a total of 5,000 monks and nuns. Most significant for the future development of monasticism were Cassian’s Institutes, which provided a guide for monastic life and his Conferences, a collection of spiritual reflections.

Honoratus of Marseilles was a wealthy Gallo-Roman aristocrat, who after a pilgrimage to Egypt, founded the Monastery of Lerins, on an island lying off the modern city of Cannes. Lerins became, in time, a center of monastic culture and learning, and many later monks and bishops would pass through Lerins in the early stages of their career.

Italy

The anonymous Rule of the Master (Regula magistri), was written somewhere south of Rome around 500. The rule adds administrative elements not found in earlier rules, defining the activities of the monastery, its officers, and their responsibilities in great detail.

Benedict of Nursia was the most influential early Western monk. He was educated in Rome but soon sought the life of a hermit in a cave at Subiaco, outside the city. He then attracted followers with whom he founded the monastery of Monte Cassino around 520, between Rome and Naples. His Rule is shorter than the Master’s, and somewhat less legalistic. By the 9th century, largely under the inspiration of the Emperor Charlemagne, Benedict’s Rule became the basic guide for Western monasticism.

Ireland

The earliest Monastic settlements in Ireland emerged at the end of the 5th century. The first identifiable founder of a monastery was Saint Brigit, a saint who ranked with Saint Patrick as a major figure of the Irish church. The monastery at Kildare was a double monastery, with both men and women ruled by the Abbess, a pattern found in many other monastic foundations.

Commonly Irish monasteries were established by grants of land to an abbot or abbess, who came from a local noble family. The monastery became the spiritual focus of the tribe or kin group. Irish monastic rules specify a stern life of prayer and discipline in which prayer, poverty, and obedience are the central themes. However Irish monks read Latin texts, both spiritual and secular, with an enthusiasm that their contemporaries on the continent lacked. By the end of the 7th century, Irish monastic schools were attracting students from England and from Europe.

Irish monasticism spread widely, first to Scotland and Northern England, then to Gaul and Italy. Columba and his followers established monasteries at Bangor, on the northeastern coast of Ireland, at Iona in Scotland, and at Lindisfarne, in Northumbria. Columbanus, an abbot from a Leinster noble family, traveled to Gaul in the late 6th century with twelve companions. Columbanus and his followers spread the Irish model of monastic institutions established by noble families to the continent. A whole series of new rural monastic foundations on great rural estates under Irish influence sprang up, starting with Columbanus’s foundations of Fontaines and Luxeuil, sponsored by the Frankish King Childebert II. After Childebert’s death Columbanus traveled east to Metz, where Theudebert II allowed him to establish a new monastery among the semi-pagan Alemanni in what is now Switzerland. One of Columbanus’s followers founded the monastery of St. Gall on the shores of Lake Constance, while Columbanus continued onward across the Alps to the kingdom of the Lombards in Italy. There King Agilulf and his wife Theodolinda granted Columbanus land in the mountains between Genoa and Milan, where he established the monastery of Bobbio.

List of Catholic religious orders

As per the Annuario Pontificio, these are the existing approved and recognized Catholic religious orders:

Congregation (Catholic)

In reference to Catholic religious orders, the term congregation has two usages.

Primarily, a congregation is one of the Catholic religious institutes in which simple vows, not solemn vows, are taken. In the canon law of the Catholic Church, public vows are divided into simple vows and solemn vows. Professed members of monastic and certain other orders (e.g., the Jesuits) take solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the vows of religion) in which all claims to inheritances are renounced. Countries which recognized canon law as having legal force for the society would automatically enforce this religious practice. Members of religious congregations take simple versions of them, which allow for inheritance.

This innovation was introduced after the experience in the Catholic Church of the upheavals brought about the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic invasions of other Catholic countries. Thousands of monks and nuns were left to live in poverty, having forsaken any means of income to which they might have been entitled through inheritances. This was coupled with the rise of the new groups of religious men and women, whose way of life was oriented not to the ancient monastic way of life, but rather more to social service in response to the widespread poverty of the age, and to evangelization, both in Europe and overseas.

The other major use of this term is to denote the various grouping of Benedictine monasteries into independent associations, presided over by the abbot of a particular community. Thus one speaks of, e.g., the Cassinese or Camaldolese congregations. These different congregations vary in regard to the authority of the presiding abbot. Thus, in some congregations, the role of the presiding abbot is directly exercised upon the individual member of the congregation, while in others, it is more of a role of guidance to the monastic community.

List of congregations

The 2000 Annuario Pontificio lists about 1 million persons in religious institutes worldwide. This included 139,397 religious priests (and excluded 265,781 diocesan priests), 55,057 religious brothers, and 801,185 religious sisters.

The following list refers to some of the major religious congregations of the Catholic Church; it should be understood that communities using the same name may exist in also in the Anglican tradition, as well as there can be more than one Catholic congregation with the same name. Each is accompanied by its official name in English as well as the acronym (or “post-nominal initials”) commonly used to identify its members. In many cases name variations and/or alternative names are also in use. In parentheses is the year it was established.

Some organizations in the following list are not Religious Institutes because they are Associations of the Faithful and have not yet received a decree of erection to become an Institute of Consecrated Life. For this reason, this list does not verify the canonical status of an organization:

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