Biohazard Cleanup Near Conception Historic District Conception, MO

Conception is an unincorporated census-designated place in southeastern Nodaway County, Missouri — it has no city government of its own and exists almost entirely because of the monastery at its heart.

Conception is home to Conception Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded on December 8, 1873, by monks of Engelberg Abbey in Switzerland, who wanted a refuge in case their home monastery was suppressed by the Swiss government.

The monastery was raised to a conventual priory in 1876 and elevated to an abbey in 1881, and its community has numbered around sixty monks in recent years.

The Abbey Church, dedicated on May 10, 1891, was declared a minor basilica by Pope Pius XII in 1941 — the first basilica west of the Mississippi River — and its interior is famed for Beuronese-style murals painted by the monks between 1893 and 1897.

The monks administer Conception Seminary College, founded in 1886 as the College of New Engelberg, which says it has educated about 75 percent of the priests of the Kansas City–St. Joseph diocese.

Future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas studied for the priesthood at Conception Seminary in 1968 before leaving to pursue law.

The abbey's Printery House, added in the 1930s, prints around five million greeting cards a year.

The 2020 census counted just 111 people in the Conception census-designated place, most of them connected to the abbey and seminary, and the 2010 census population of 210 was roughly 87 percent male because of the monastic and seminary community.