Roman Giel von Gielsberg studied at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, and made his vows to the Benedictine diocese in Kempten (Bavaria), in 1630. While entering the monastic order, he took the name of 'Romanus'. When he at age 27, in the middle of the thirty year war, was elected abbot (Fürstab) in Mai 1639, he then returned to Kempten. The Monastery had been destroyed by Swedish troupes and the citizen of the Protestant City of Kempten, the election of von Gilsberg was therefore held in Unterhingau.

From 1648 and onward, he planned and worked with the rebuilding of the monastery with residence and church. In 1674, one year after his death, the first grand-scale ecclesiastical building project after the thirty year war, the monastery complex of Kempten, was completed. Roman Gils von Gilsberg is buried in front of the Mary-altar in Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome.