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Our Lady of Dallas
The Founding of Our Lady of Dallas
The founders of Our Lady of Dallas were refugees from
Hungary
. The exodus began immediately after World War II and the Soviet takeover of
Hungary
, when several monks were sent abroad, searching for a suitable place to found a new Abbey. Soon, the Communist authorities disbanded the then-flourishing Cistercian mother-Abbey of Zirc (pronounced “ZEER-ts”), seizing control of its land, schools, and parishes. Of the 215 displaced monks, more than thirty fled the country, seeking refuge in other European abbeys. Some escaped alone, others in small groups. One large group left immediately after the suppression of the monastery in 1950, another upon the failure of the anti-Communist revolution of 1956. The community of Zirc also continued a clandestine existence in
Hungary
during the suppression, and many of the remaining Cistercians lived lives of heroic fidelity, routinely enduring harassment and intimidation. More than a few received imprisonment and torture for their efforts.
The refugee monks spent years in dispersion, scattered across Western Europe and in the
United States
. In 1954, several of them were invited by Thomas Gorman, the Bishop of the Dallas-Fort Worth Diocese, to come to
Texas
and help found a new Catholic university, the
University
of
Dallas
. This initial group was slowly joined by later waves of Hungarian Cistercians, and in 1961 was established as an independent monastery under the local patronage of Mary: “Our Lady of Dallas”. The monastery founded
Cistercian
Preparatory School
, modeled after the Cistercian schools of
Hungary
, in 1962.
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