Preserving the Land with Love and Devotion
Posted on August 11, 2025, by Loretto Community
Posted by The Daily Yonder August 7, 2025
Donna Eder visits the Cedars of Peace hermitages at the Loretto Motherhouse at least four times a year. Here in a small cabin, constructed with wood from the surrounding forest, she retreats in a way she can’t anywhere else. The feeling emerges from meditating in the rustic chapel, taking contemplative walks around Mary Lake, reading words of encouragement and gratitude in the communal cabin journals, and sitting on the screened porch experiencing the sights and sounds of the forest.
“It’s so peaceful there, and I don’t just mean it’s quiet,” Eder said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “The land holds a deep sense of restful peace. The nuns have put prayerful energy into it for so long, and I have a strong sense of being sheltered and watched over.”
The Catholic Sisters of Loretto have stewarded this 788-acre property since 1824. Nerinx, Kentucky, is deep in the central bluegrass region, about a little over an hour south of Louisville. It was farmed by Father Stephen Badin, the first priest ordained in the United States, from 1796 to 1819. Before that, it was the home to the Native American mound-building cultures of Adena and Hopewell as well as the Cherokee, Haudenosaunee, Shawnee and Yucchi tribes.
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Read the entire story on The Daily Yonder website here.
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