The directory

How complete this is

The directory was compiled in November 2026 from the orders' own lists of houses, national directories and open map data, then reconciled against each other. A house with no mark has not necessarily been checked for need: only 832 houses were examined one by one.

Examined house by house: the United States (every house found, then cross-checked by a separate state-by-state sweep that added ten more), the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Enumerated from national directories, with need taken from foundations and the press: Spain (Fundación DeClausura's directory and its full list of appeals), France (the Service des Moniales and the Fondation des Monastères), Italy (a 2024 national list of women's monasteries and the orders' lists), Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czechia, Hungary and Croatia. Germany and Switzerland are roughly four-fifths complete; closures before 2025 are under-recorded everywhere outside the United States, Britain, Ireland and the Low Countries.

Rest of the world: only the orders that publish a full list of their houses: Benedictine monks and nuns, Trappists, Cistercians, Carthusians, Camaldolese and the Monastic Family of Bethlehem. Carmelite, Poor Clare, Dominican and other enclosed nuns outside Europe and the United States are largely missing, because no public directory of them exists.

Houses placed by town, not by exact site, say so on the map.