Dear Friends,
The month of November was passed, in my own case, in catching up with the mound of letters and the hundreds
of emails which awaited my return to the monastery after an absence of one month. My absence was due to
the General Chapter of our particular Benedictine congregation and the Congress of Abbots of the whole
Benedictine Order.
A number of superiors at the Congress remarked at how moved they were by the international character of the
Order, and at how the wisdom of St Benedict has reached the very ends of the earth. Those of us of the
Congregation of Subiaco had, by the time we reached Rome, already had ten days of multi-lingual,
multi-national, multi-cultural riches in the north of Italy at the Abbey of Praglia. In this issue of
Laudetur I give a brief overview of my time spent at both the General Chapter and the Congress of Abbots.
On the Feast of the Guardian Angels we welcomed a group of singers, who, under the prestigious direction of
Dr Mary Berry of Cambridge, sang at a Mass in the Abbey Church (shown left and overleaf). At Dr Berry’s
request, this was sung in the so-called Tridentine Rite, according to the missal of 1962. It was a Solemn
High Mass, the first to be celebrated at our High Altar in some forty years.
This edition of Laudetur contains the last of the series of the Life of Saint Benedict. This life, from
the Dialogues of St Gregory the Great, has been a feature of Laudetur since its inception. In our December
issue we will commence a month-by-month reading of the Rule of Saint Benedict.
Laudetur has been produced monthly since November 2000. This is quite a heavy work for a small and very
busy community, but, heartened by the encouragement and kind words we receive from our readers, it is our
hope that we will reach a tenth anniversary at least!
With every good wish,
Sincerely in the Lord,
rchived 
ews
