Welcome to the Historic Mater Dei Chapel!
A Look Inside this Sacred Space
This stunningly inspiring space is the spiritual and communal centerpiece of our campus and is the setting for commissioning and pinning ceremonies, lecture programs, memorial observances, and worship services throughout the year. Mount students begin their time at the university druing a moving candle-lighting ceremony here, and conclude it with a Baccalaureate Mass in the chapel just before commencement.
Over the past six decades, more than 470 couples have commenced married life by vowing their lives to one another in this sacred space. We invite you to tour the chapel at your leisure, paying special attention to the stained-glass windows, crucifix, stations of the cross, statuary, and other exquisite artwork. All of it was designed by six women—three Sisters of Charity and three undergraduate art students —in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, a time when women were all but absent from leadership roles in the professional worlds of architecture, art, and design, let alone the creation of religious spaces.
In March 2024, under the guidance of then Chief Mission Officer Sister Karen Elliott, C.PP.S., the Chapel was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was recognized for its historical and cultural significance – as the first chapel created by all women in the 1960s, and the only one created by faculty and undergraduate students at a US Catholic college or university -- as well as its architectural value, in the mid-century modern (MCM) style.
Click here to contribute to the restoration of the Mater Dei Chapel
