page_title: Mater Ecclesiae Monastery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mater Ecclesiae Monastery / History
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the Vatican Gardens
context_page_description: The Mater Ecclesiae Monastery is a monastery located inside Vatican City. It was founded around 1990 by Pope John Paul II as a monastery for cloistered nuns. In 2013, it became the residence of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI after his resignation.
context_section_description: The monastery, named after a Catholic title for Mary as "Mother of the Church" (Latin: Mater Ecclesiae), is located on the Vatican Hill inside the Vatican Gardens and near the Aquilone fountain. It was founded by Pope John Paul II in order to have a  community of nuns of an enclosed religious order inside Vatican City, who were to pray for the pope in his service to the Catholic Church. This task was, at the beginning, entrusted to the nuns of the Order of St. Clare, better known as the Poor Clares. This assignment, however, was shifted every five years to another female monastic order, who would then occupy the monastery.
  The building was erected between 1992 and 1994 in place of an administrative building of the Vatican police. Its structure is incorporated into the Leonine walls. The building is divided in two parts: The western chapel (two floors and rectangular in shape) and the eastern community rooms and monastic cells (rectangular in shape and, on the Aquilone fountain's side, with four floors, with 12 monastic cells on the second and third floors, and a refectory, store, kitchen, infirmary, archives and an office-studio on the ground and lower ground floors). Adjacent to the monastery is a fruit and vegetable garden. Pope Benedict XVI visited the monastery several times, where he would preside at Mass for the nuns.
  With the start of renovation works in November 2012, the last nuns moved out.
  After his historic retirement in February of the following year, Pope Benedict XVI moved into the monastery on 2 May 2013. He lives there accompanied by a few assistants, with their domestic needs cared for by a small community of women belonging to a secular institute called Memores Domini, part of the Communion and Liberation movement.
caption: The gardens next to the monastery
exif: {"Image Make": "", "Image Model": "", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "426", "Image YResolution": "426", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:11:21 15:01:23", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "158", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "472", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "20517", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1704", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "336", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom"}