Sankta Birgitta's Abbey (or Abbedi Pax Mariae) is the present monastery of the Order of the Redeemer (Latin Ordo sanctissimi Salvatoris) in the small town of Vadstena on Lake Vättern, where the Order was founded in the 14th century by Birgitta Birgersdotter, the later St. Birgitta.
The medieval monastery complex in the east of the town had been consecrated in 1384, the monastery church in 1430, and had even survived the Swedish Reformation (1527-1593) by two years until the last nuns had been expelled by Duke Charles IX and had largely left the country.
The Crown then put the buildings of the complex to other uses. In 1830, the convent church succeeded the town church of St. Per (St. Peter's) as a Protestant parish church, and still is today.
Sankta Birgitta's Abbey dates back to the founding of a guesthouse by the so-called Swedish branch of the Order of the Redeemer in 1935. This branch was founded in Rome in 1911 by Mother Elisabeth Maria Hesselblad, who has since been canonised. The guesthouse is the former Villa Strandgården, which was built around 1915 by the architect Henning Möller for the lady and patroness Galathea Hanström. It was extended to the west in 1954. In 1935, all monastic activity in Sweden was still prohibited.
In 1963 the abbey was taken over from the original Birgittine order, founded in 1435, by the Maria Refugie monastery in Uden, Holland.
The present monastery buildings in the west were built according to the plans of the architect Karl-Göran Eklund and consecrated on the 600th anniversary of the "heavenly birthday" of St Birgitta on 23 July 1373. The enclosure, which is not open to the public, is designed for twenty nuns and houses a traditional "grass garden" surrounded by a high brick wall with stone fragments from various Birgittine monasteries set into the exterior. The church itself, in keeping with the precepts of St Birgitta, is humble, strong and simple in design and has no painted windows.
Situated to the south-west of the medieval monastery complex, Sankta Birgittas Kloster was recognised as an independent priory by the Congregation of the Order in Rome in 1988 and became an abbey with an abbess at its head (Abbey of Mary's Peace) in 1991.
