Santa Sabina Center

The Congregation of the Most Holy Name of Jesus was founded in Monterey, California, with the arrival of Sister Mary of the Cross Goemaere on December 6, 1850.  Between 1851 and 1854, she was joined by a group of nine new Dominican sisters and became the prioress of the first group of religious in the new state. After moving to Benicia in 1854, they expanded their education ministry across Northern California and Nevada. In 1889, Mother Louis O’Donnell founded a new motherhouse in San Rafael, on the site that would become Dominican University of California. By the 1930s, Prioress Mother Mary Raymond O’Connor identified the need for a Novitiate House that would reflect the “depths of Dominican monastic tradition,” and hired architect Arnold Sutherland Constable and liturgical artist E. Charlton Fortune to create a space that would foster contemplation and community. In the wake of Vatican II, the Novitiate House became a contemplative retreat center in 1970, and it has welcomed contemplatives of all faiths as the Santa Sabina Center since then.