The Chapel: Stone Upon Stone — Summer 2026 Construction Update

The Apse Vault Completed

Throughout the winter the monks turned their attention skyward to finish the vaulted ceiling above the apse. With the great stone arches and their flower-carved keystones locked in place last summer, that season’s work was the careful setting of the webstones—the smaller infill stones that fill the spaces between each arch.

Overhead view of stone arch ribs and infill webstones on the Chapel's vaulted ceiling

The back of the webstones, seen from above.

Each piece had to be cut, fitted, and set with such precision that the whole ceiling, weighing many tons, would hold itself together by the marvel of the gothic vault: stone seemingly defying gravity, pressing inward upon itself. With the last webstone now in place, the interior of the apse stands finished—a first foretaste, beneath true stone vaulting, of what the whole Chapel will one day be.

View looking straight up into a finished Gothic stone vaulted ceiling with wooden scaffolding

Looking up into the apse vault.

The Exterior Walls Rise

With the apse vault complete from within, the monks have turned outward to the granite that will clothe the Chapel’s exterior. This is the same hard, durable stone the monks have spent recent winters carving—over 1,000 pieces now shaped and palletized, each carrying a unique name indicating where it will one day be set. Piece by piece those names are being called and the stones lifted into place around the apse.

A monk in work clothes and hard hat lifting a stone block into place on the Chapel wall

A monk sets stone on the Chapel.

Scaffolding and steel bracing around newly set granite walls of the Chapel apse

Granite rising around the apse.

In the Carving Shop

Meanwhile, in the carving shop the work never ceases: while some monks set stone outside, others remain at the saws and chisels, shaping granite for the nave walls, the buttresses, and the belltower beyond. Granite is an unforgiving material, slow to shape even with diamond-tipped tools, but every piece readied this summer is one more stone waiting to rise in the summer to come.

A monk wearing a red hard hat carving a granite pinnacle piece in the workshop

A monk at work on a piece of granite.

A CNC machine spraying water while carving an intricate granite pinnacle with a hooded monk figure

Carving the pinnacle base on a CNC machine.

Not a single stone of this Chapel would be in place without you. Each course of granite, each carved webstone, each piece still waiting on the pallet has been shaped and set by the prayers and generosity of our benefactors. The monks ask in turn that you would accept the only return they can offer: a hidden life of prayer and sacrifice lifted up daily for you and your intentions.

May God reward you, and may the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen and Beauty of Carmel, hold you ever close to her Immaculate Heart.

New Mount Carmel Foundation

The New Mount Carmel Foundation, Inc. serves the temporal needs of the Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel by bringing together donations from disparate sources and facilitating the purchase, development and ongoing operation of a new monastery for this rapidly growing community of young Monks.