Abbot Caedmon Holmes, O.S.B., recently returned from a two-week visit to Rome, where he participated in the Benedictine Abbot's Worldwide Congress.
Following is the second installment of Abbot Caedmon's trip report:
"I arrived in Rome on Monday, September 15, and went immediately to Sant'Anselmo, the primatial abbey of the Benedictine Confederation, on the Aventine Hill. (Sant'Anselmo is not a monastery in the ordinary sense: there is no resident community, but the house is full of students and professors during the academic year; and the Abbot Primate and his officials reside there throughout the year.) Getting to my room about ten o'clock in the morning, I unpacked and then lay down, weary from the transatlantic flight and no sleep. (On my four former trips to Rome, no matter how tired I was, I would unpack and then set out immediately to explore the city. When I mentioned to some of the abbots that this time I had gone to bed upon arrival, they told me that that is a sign of old age. I'm sixty-six...)
"The following day we new superiors, who had arrived two days early, were given a program of reports from the Abbot Primate and the financial officers of Sant'Anselmo, on the economics of the house and recent repairs and renovations of the building. Americans and English personnel are prominent at Sant'Anselmo: the Prior (second in command to the Abbot Primate, and in charge of the day-to-day life of the house) is Fr. Michael Naughton, a monk of St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN; the Rector of the Atheneum is Dom Mark Sheridan, a monk of our sister monastery, St. Anselm's in Washington, DC; the Treasurer is Dom Laurence Soper, former abbot of Ealing Abbey in London; and there are several professors from the US and UK.
"Wednesday we got on a bus for a two-hour ride to Monte Cassino, halfway between Rome and Naples. It is a great monastery founded by St. Benedict himself in the sixth century. The bus carried us up a precarious switchback road to the abbey. Perched on the top of a mountain and surrounded by mountains in every direction, it is an ideal point from which to see what is going on in the neighborhood, including the main road from the south to Rome. So the Allied Forces in World War II decided to destroy it, lest it be used by the Germans to impede the advance on the Italian capital. On February 15, 1944, the buildings were just about totally pulverized by bombing. Afterward there was an unexploded bomb found in the tomb of Saint Benedict and his sister Saint Scholastica under the high altar of the church. So the relics of Saint Benedict survive there for veneration today in the monastery rebuilt to look exactly as it had looked before the bombing.
"We were ushered into the large sacristy, adorned with wood paneling and oil paintings, to vest for Mass. When we were all standing ready, the newly elected abbot, Dom Pietro Vittorelli, the 191st successor of Saint Benedict, came in and shook hands with each and every one of us. Then he himself vested in pontifical vestments, and we proceeded to the high altar of the basilica for a solemn Votive Mass of St Benedict. Afterward we were ushered into the spacious refectory to share a festive meal with abbot and community. Then there was time to investigate the monastery museum, which features, besides paintings and richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestments and altar vessels, some artifacts from as far back as Roman times, including an ornately carved red porphyry chair with a hole in the seat, labeled as a birthing stool. We visited the gift shop, and were able also to marvel at the spectacular views from the monastery out over the valley to nearer and farther mountain peaks. Then onto the bus and back down the winding descent to the main road toward Rome, to be back at Sant'Anselmo in time for Vespers.
"By Thursday the other abbots had arrived and the full Congress began. During the following days we heard addresses and participated in workshops on monastic life, liturgical and private prayer, and the experience of being a religious superior as well as on the state of the Church in China, on Benedictine education, the state of our dialogue with other adherents of other religions, and outreach to poorer monasteries. One day the President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, addressed us. On another it was the Pope's preacher, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa. Toward the end of the congress, the newly retired Abbot General of the Cistercian Order, Dom Bernardo Oliveira, a Brazilian, spoke. And his successor, Dom Eamon Fitzgerald, from Ireland, greeted us.
"The languages of the Congress were Italian, English, French, Spanish, and German; and simultaneous translation was provided via earphones. The translators were not professionals, but were monks and students at Sant'Anselmo. They did an excellent job, as far as I could tell.
"Each day we sang the Liturgy of the Hours together in Latin morning and evening in the choir of the Church of St Anselm; and at noon we concelebrated and sang Mass in Latin at the ancient Church of Santa Sabina, which is less than a five-minute walk from Sant'Anselmo. Cardinal Dias was Principal Celebrant one day, Cardinal Arinze another. Meals were in the refectory at Sant'Anselmo, and were universally judged to be very good. The weather was on the cool side--something completely new to me, who had known Rome on my four earlier trips as nothing but hot and sultry.
"It was enjoyable to make new acquaintances, including Dom Andre Bourget, the abbot of St Benoit du Lac in Canada, Dom Placid Spearitt, abbot of New Norcia in Australia, Dom Tarcisio Narciso from Manila, and Dom Christopher Schwartz, the new abbot of St Andrew Abbey in my hometown of Cleveland, and to greet again Abbot Timothy Kelly, President of the American Cassinese Congregation and Sister Judith Ann Heble of Lisle, IL, the Moderator of the Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum (the women's equivalent of the Benedictine Confederation), both of whom stayed a couple of days at Portsmouth last June for the meeting of the Presidents of the American Benedictine Congregations, which we hosted. There were also friends and acquaintances among the many abbots from the United States, as well as the Superiors of our sister houses of the English Benedictine Congregation.
"Halfway through the Congress, on Saturday, September 20, our whole assemblage rode out to Castel Gandolfo to the Pope's summer residence for a special audience with His Holiness. The text of his address to us can be found translated elsewhere on this website (see Monastery News and School News, 10/6/08). He encouraged us to continue our work with the young.
"The following day we went in the afternoon to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, to venerate the tomb of the Apostle in this Pauline Jubilee Year (the two-thousandth anniversary of his birth), and to sing Vespers with the resident Benedictine community in the magnificent apse of the basilica. There have been Benedictine monks at St. Paul's for thirteen centuries. The present abbot, Dom Edmund Power, the first Englishman to be abbot there in nine hundred years, is a monk of our sister abbey of Douai in England. In June of 2006 and 2007, he personally gave detailed and informative tours of the basilica to the participants in Mr. Peter O'Connor's Portsmouth Abbey School pilgrimage to Rome. After Vespers the resident Benedictine community of St. Paul's hosted a reception for the abbots in a large courtyard of the monastery attached to the basilica.
"In the middle of the second week of the two-week Congress, we had the choice of three Benedictine pilgrimage spots to visit: Monte Cassino, Subiaco, and Norcia. I chose Norcia, because it was the one I had not yet seen, and because Jeremy Nivakoff '97 is a member of the fledgling monastic community of Norcia. He is Brother Benedict, the Sub-prior. Virgil refers to Nursia (the ancient form of the name of the town) in one place, in Book VII of the Aeneid, where he calls it frigida Nursia, "chilly Nursia;" and--sure enough--when we pulled up to the gate of the walled city, there were Fr. Cassian, the Prior, and Br. Benedict, the Sub-prior, waiting to meet us, attired in their heavy capes: it was chilly still at toward 11 o'clock in the morning. At the center of the town is a wide-open piazza paved in white marble, with a statue of St. Benedict on a pedestal in the center. It is obvious that the townspeople are very proud of their sainted fellow-citizen. The basilica of San Benedetto is on the piazza, and the monastery where the monks live is attached to it. We were brought to the crypt of the basilica to vest for Mass. It contains excavations of an ancient Roman house, believed to be the house of St. Benedict's family, where he would have been born. The archbishop of Spoleto-Norcia, Msgr. Riccardo Fontana, who intends to ordain Br. Benedict Nivakoff priest on October 11, was the principal celebrant of the Votive Mass of St. Benedict which we concelebrated. He preached the sermon to us in Latin. After Mass he joined us at a restaurant a little outside of town, where we were treated to an excellent meal. (Norcia is known for its good food, especially pork products.) As we parted, the archbishop shook hands cordially with each of us. He kindly expressed the hope that he would see me (who had been introduced to him earlier by Brother Benedict as his old teacher) again one day in Norcia. Before returning to the bus for the three-hour journey back to Rome, we were given a tour of the ruined monastery outside of town where the new Benedictine community hopes to take up residence once it has been restored.
"Our meetings continued till midday on Saturday, September 27. On the Thursday afternoon preceding, we re-elected the Abbot Primate, Dom Notker Wolf, to a four-year term. He had kindly agreed to come to Portsmouth to give the Commencement Address next May 24.
"There were something like two hundred and fifty abbots present from all over the globe. The presence of native abbots from monasteries in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa alongside the archabbots of Monte Cassino and Subiaco (foundations of St. Benedict himself), the abbot of Liguge (founded even before St. Benedict's time by St. Martin), and abbots of such illustrious monasteries as Solesmes, Montserrat, Maria Laach, and Pannonhalma gave me a renewed sense of the historical and planetary scope of our little Order (declared by some to be more a Disorder), which suffers from so many difficulties but continues to live and to offer the world something of value."
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