St. Benedict’s Monastery, described by its stewards as a “symbol of God’s presence” in the heart of a “sacred valley” in Old Snowmass, has sold for $120 million, according to documents filed with the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder.
The true identity behind Espen LLC, as well as the buyer’s intents for the property, had not been revealed in public documents or official statements from the parties involved in the sale as of Tuesday evening. However, the Wall Street Journal reported that the buyer was Palantir CEO Alex Karp, citing “a source with knowledge of the deal.”
Pitkin County recorded a special warranty deed for the transaction and bargain and sale deeds for the land and water rights Monday afternoon, according to the county’s online records portal. The final public Mass at St. Benedict’s is scheduled for Jan. 11, Father Damian Carr announced at the end of services on Sunday.
Espen LLC has also granted an access easement for the St. Benedict’s cemetery, located just upslope from the monastery’s central chapel and cloisters, according to another document recorded Monday.
The easement will allow access to the family of those buried in the cemetery as well as members of the Trappist order, which is formally known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance and is Catholic in denomination.
Among those buried are renowned spiritual leaders of contemplative prayer, including the prolific writer and speaker Father Thomas Keating and his successor as abbot of St. Benedict’s, Father Joseph Boyle. Father Theophane Boyd, author of “Tales of the Magic Monastery,” is also buried there alongside other monks.
“My heart is with the brothers (of St. Benedict’s) and with the land,” Pitkin County Commissioner Jeffrey Woodruff said in a phone call Tuesday night. He represents the county’s District 4, which includes the Old Snowmass area.
“I profoundly respect and admire the monastery and the brothers who have taken such care of our valley,” Woodruff added. “We love the beauty of this land, and the monks, the brothers have been amazing stewards.”
Woodruff would not comment on what might come next for the property within Pitkin County’s purview, however, because the Board of County Commissioners could play a quasi-judicial role in future land use hearings.
Who is the buyer?
Some LLCs identify a human “registered agent” in filings with their Secretary of State, in turn offering clues to the identity of owners and managers. But the entity that purchased St. Benedict’s had an extra layer of anonymity.
Espen LLC incorporated in the state of Delaware on Aug. 20 with “Corporation Service Company” as its registered agent. The company offers business compliance services all over the world, and as a registered agent, it’s affiliated with a mountain of other LLCs.
Espen LLC has also filed a “statement of foreign entity authority” with the Colorado Secretary of State. “Foreign,” in this case, just means any entity located outside Colorado.
That filing from Nov. 19 lists a principal office address at the New Hampshire branch of a business consulting firm called Wipfli. The paperwork was filed by Patrick O. Collins, an estate and trusts lawyer also based in New Hampshire. Aspen Journalism left a message with Collins’ office late Tuesday afternoon for comment but had not heard back by press time.
The sale documents filed with Pitkin County list Espen LLC’s address as 1012 Monastery Road — the address of the St. Benedict’s property they just purchased. It does not appear the entity has filed any other “statement of authority” paperwork with Pitkin County that would identify additional affiliations.
The Wall Street Journal’s reporting that identified Palantir’s Karp as the buyer cited “a source with knowledge of the deal.” One of the listing agents, Ken Mirr, “declined to comment on the identity of the buyer, but said the purchaser does plan to use the property as a home.” Karp is the cofounder and CEO of Palantir, “a data-analysis firm best known for working with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies,” the Wall Street Journal reported. According to the Forbes World’s Billionaires List, he has an estimated net worth as of Dec. 16 of $16.8 billion.
Sale has been years in the making
Sale and closure of the monastery has been a possibility for years, as the monks of St. Benedict’s have grown older and their community has gotten smaller. Five monks celebrate Mass there now, down from 18 members present in 2009.
By percentage, it’s one of the steepest declines in population of any monastery still operating in the Trappist order, based on data collected in the order’s annual census and recent numbers at Sunday services. (The order did not list Snowmass in the census last year and has already removed St. Benedict’s from its online directory.)
Talks about an uncertain future began prior to the death of Father Boyle, who served as abbot from 1985 until his passing in 2018, and the conversation continued under Boyle’s successor, Father Charles Albanese. A committee of monastery supporters met in 2020 to develop alternate ideas for the property, ranging from a center for spiritual reflection to a hub for sustainable agriculture.
Local monks have stewarded St. Benedict’s 3,700-plus acres of sparsely developed land in the Capitol Creek Valley since the 1950s, and have themselves considered conservation easements to sterilize some of the open space from further development.
Those conversations began long before the monastery was placed for sale, and several St. Benedict’s neighbors have already placed conservation easements on their land to protect scenic and ecological values. Those parcels, largely agricultural, connect to large swaths of public land that stretch toward the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.
But efforts to place an easement on any of the monastery’s land did not come to fruition before the sale, despite a proposal from Pitkin County in 2022 and an “offer to help” from a group called the Friends of the Monastery in 2023.
Higher-ups in the Trappist order voted to close St. Benedict’s in 2022 and decided to leave the conservation decision up to an eventual buyer. The monastery’s retreat house and bookstore shuttered in 2023, and the entire property hit the market in the spring of 2024. It was originally listed for $150 million, with listing agents affirming they would seek a conservation-minded buyer.
Multiple parties have shown interest in the site since it was listed; prospective buyers from last fall and this spring kept their identities under wraps but inspired some optimism from onlookers about the future of the property.
The Friends of the Monastery have not formally convened since the spring, according to one member of the group, Chelsea Congdon.
Meanwhile, Pitkin County has kept its eye on the area. The county’s Open Space and Trails Board has discussed property interests in the Capitol Creek area during confidential executive sessions at almost every one of their meetings this year. But those meeting minutes and agendas don’t reveal specific properties within the area of consideration.
What happens now?
Abbot Vincent Rogers, who oversees St. Benedict’s “mother house” of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts, did not respond to phone calls before press time Tuesday evening. He declined to comment on a potential sale last week, citing strict confidentiality agreements.
Listing agents Michael Latousek, of Douglas Elliman Aspen, and Mirr, of the Denver-based Mirr Ranch Group, have also kept details of the sale confidential. Mirr wrote in a text Tuesday morning that a press release will be issued at some point in the future.
Canon law, which governs Catholic entities, requires permission from the Holy See (also known as the Vatican) for the sale of high-dollar property. St. Benedict’s Monastery — listed at $150 million, now sold for $120 million — was far above the $7.5 million threshold for a diocese of 500,000 people or more. St. Benedict’s, as part of the Archdiocese of Denver, falls into this category.
The review process goes through the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, a department of the Holy See. The Vatican does not comment on individual cases, a spokeswoman wrote in response to several previous requests for comment. Spokespeople from the archdiocese have not responded to phone calls or emails seeking comment on the sale of St. Benedict’s this month. Representatives of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance did not respond to an email inquiry earlier in December.
Last year, Rogers told Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio via email that the request for approval would be submitted “when a firm offer is made for the property,” and that the abbot general of the Trappist order would seek permission from the dicastery after he learned the details.
Rogers also wrote that St. Benedict’s monks may have some say in where they transfer next, but “whether any monks are allowed to remain at Snowmass depends on the superior of the monastery to which they transfer and the buyer of their property.”
As for the money: Some of it will follow the surviving members of St. Benedict’s to their next monastery, according to the Trappist order’s statute on the accompaniment of fragile communities and suppression of a monastery. If the assets are deemed “significant,” a portion may be used “to help other monasteries of the order, and to respond to the needs of the locality where the monastery is located.”
But the amount considered “significant” — and the definition of the “locality” — can vary.
“The Order decides these on a case by case basis, since our monasteries exist in widely different geographical areas and economic conditions,” Rogers wrote last year.