Dear Friends,
February was a busy month in the monastery this year. Since the restoration of the Abbey Press we have been
using computer and printing equipment produced by Hewlett-Packard. This company prides itself on its
‘partnership’ and its ability to offer computing ‘solutions’ to companies which use their products. This
year we have been asked by Hewlett-Packard to assist them in the international CeBIT conference in Hanover
this month. This the world’s largest exhibition of the very latest in computing and printing technology.
In order to prepare our booth for the exhibition we agreed for a film to be made about the Abbey Press and
its printing techniques. An American production team came with a supporting English film crew in three
enormous lorries filled with technical equipment. Interviews were filmed in the calefactory and other shots
around the monastery and in the church. The whole enterprise was exhausting, but the results are of an
extremely high quality. Some members of the film crew had worked on the recent James Bond! Our production
will be shown throughout the CeBIT exhibition on projectors over our booth.
Dom Alcuin made a very brief visit to Croatia in order to represent the community at a memorial Mass for
the father of a seminarian of the Archdiocese of Rijeka, Matija Maticic, who was one of the seminarians who
spent last summer with us. Matija’s father died very suddenly earlier in the year. As well as assisting the
Archbishop at Sunday Mass in Rijeka’s cathedral, Dom Alcuin was able to make a brief visit to the community
of six Benedictine nuns in the ancient island town of Krk, where Benedictine life has been lived since
before the Reformation.
It is clear that Spring is on the way. Not only are leaves appearing on the trees, but the bees have been
up to the pond at the back of the monastery taking water, and the chickens are again up to full power in
their egg-laying. Chicks seem to be hatching all over the estate and one wonders whether the peafowl will
take their turn this year.
With all our good wishes and blessings
Sincerely in the Lord,
rchived 
ews
