Photo: Kloster Hilaribergl

Kloster Hilariberg

Kramsach, Tyrol

Even today, many people bring joy and sorrow, thanks and requests, worries and and needs to the "Berglmutter" (mountain mother), as the miraculous image of Mary of Mount Carmel in the pilgrimage church on Hilaribergl is affectionately called by the faithful. In 1689, the Carmelite tertiary Hilarion a Sancto Sebastiano built a small Marian chapel with a hermitage on the Pletzach rockfall near Kramsach. Soon the place was named "Hilaribergl" after the hermit living there. In 1746, the then parish priest of Breitenbach, Sebastian Mayr, had a larger church built; in its center, the miraculous image is located under a baldachin. In 1913, the Camillians, a nursing order founded by Saint Camillus de Lellis in 1586, acquired the hermitage with the church. The house served as a study home, novitiate, and for recreation. From 1971 to 2001, the property was leased to the Union of Dominican Sisters; now Camillians are active there again.