Fr Benno had a full Benedictine missionary life in the Dakotas. He came first to the Yankton Reservation as a cleric, a Deacon, in the summer of 1941 to work as a manual laborer in building reservation churches and to practice the missionary art. Since he was such a man of the earth and so simple in all his tastes, he was immediately beloved by Native Americans. By them he was called Wambdi Ska, the sacred Being -- White Eagle.

After his ordination Fr Benno was permanently assigned to the Yankton People as a "field man." He was daily out on the reservation with the widowed and orphaned. He was regularly at the hospital. He included in his visiting all those in prison and the handicapped in the mental hospital. For a short time in 1948 he was superior of Marty Mission, the large Benedictine high school that drew Indian students from all parts of the nation. In September, 1954, at Marty, Fr Benno was named rector of a beginning minor seminary for Blue Cloud Abbey students. Two years later, in 1956, he moved to Turtle Mountain Reservation, where he began a long term chaplaincy for the Benedictine sisters of Queen of Peace Convent. From Turtle Mountain he moved a few miles south, to Fort Totten. Without fail he continued his missionary commitment, a commitment to visit daily those who are the most forgotten.

His last years were spent, once again, on Turtle Mountain, and it was there that his strength began to wane. The Benedictine sisters at St Mary's Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota, welcomed him as their chaplain, while he continued his ministry -- much abbreviated now -- in the poorer sections of the capitol city. For the last several months of his life he returned to the abbey, where he died.