Monti Retreat Center

History & origins

The name “Monti” comes from Luigi Maria Monti, founder of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception. In nineteenth-century Italy, Monti cared for poor sick people who could not obtain proper treatment, and this work led in 1857 to the founding of a congregation that takes the Immaculate Virgin Mary as its patroness. The congregation’s connection with Korea began in 1996, when it started to embody in Korean circumstances its founding commitment to serve the sick, young people, and those marginalized by society.

The Korean community obtained authorization in 2002 for the “Star of the Sea” social-welfare corporation and established its base in Imok-dong, Suwon, in 2003. Alongside residential and vocational-rehabilitation work for people with intellectual disabilities, Monti Retreat House and a family counseling center were established there. The congregation’s apostolate thus developed in a way that did not separate welfare, education, counseling, and retreats, but sought to care for the whole person. Catholic media from the late 2000s onward continued to report the congregation’s welfare, counseling, and retreat ministries.

Monti Retreat House is one part of the retreat apostolate that took shape with this Suwon community. Public sources more clearly document the process by which several ministries were developed together after the monastery became established than a separate inauguration date for the retreat house alone. Its origins are therefore best understood within the broader development by which the founder’s care for the sick and marginalized was extended in Korea into an apostolate embracing disability welfare, family counseling, and spiritual reflection.