Peace !

Fr Stan ~ SlideShow
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On January 22, 2006, our confrere and a founding member of the community, Father Stanislaus Maudlin, O.S.B. died at St. William’s Home in Milbank, South Dakota.  In December, he had received an honorary doctorate from Mount Marty College, Yankton, South Dakota, and a couple weeks later, he suffered a stroke that necessitated his receiving care in the nursing home. 

Father Stan, as he was known by all of us and his many friends, was born in Greensburg, Indiana on December 16, 1916.  After having attended the minor seminary at St. Meinrad’s Abbey, he entered monastic life there in 1934 and professed vows on August 7, 1935.  He was sent to Rome for the completion of his theology at Sant’ Anselmo, and the pursuit of a S.T. D.  While in Europe, Father Stan made his solemn profession at St. Meinrad’s motherhouse in Switzerland, the Abbey of Maria-Einsiedeln.  Circumstances abroad were the cause for his untimely return to the United States.  Father Stan was often heard to say he would have probably still been teaching in the seminary if it had not been for Hitler’s rise to power.  Father Stan, not having attained his advanced degree in theology, was sent to the Indian missions following his ordination to the priesthood in 1942. 

From 1943 until 1950, he was at St. Ann’s, Belcourt, North Dakota.  In 1950, he became the superior at St. Michael’s, St. Michael, North Dakota.  After six years there, he was assigned to one of the South Dakota missions, Immaculate Conception, Stephan, South Dakota.  Father Stan was with the search party from St. Meinrad’s on the day in 1949 when the site was found for Blue Cloud. Five years later, he and the other St. Meinrad monks in the Dakotas transferred their stability from the Indiana monastery to the newly created Blue Cloud Abbey.  In 1967, Father Stan became the executive director of the American Indian Culture Research Center here at Blue Cloud.  He was enthusiastic about this work until the very end of his life.  Within the past few months, the AICRC was involved in establishing a digital library and long term archive to preserve tribal photographs. 

When Bishop Paul V. Dudley was the Ordinary of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, he appointed Father Stan as his Vicar for the Indian Ministry.  Upon Father Stan’s resignation from this position in 1992, Bishop Dudley wrote to him: “You are sort of the ‘patriarch’ of Indian ministry in South Dakota.  People of every faith respect you deeply. The Native Americans have an awesome reverence for your priestly ministry.”  In these later years, Father Stan wrote a monthly column for the South Falls diocesan paper, and this earned the admiration of many readers. 

The last month of Father Stan’s life was spent in and out of reality.  One day he was under the impression that he was living in Alaska.  The following day, people from the Crow Creek Reservation visited him.  He not only recognized them; he spoke Dakota with them. 

Chet and Colleen Cordell and Rebecca Durrenberger were with him when he died.  Colleen had been his secretary for many years and Rebecca was recently hired to manage the photo project.

We ask the members of our monastic congregation and all other Benedictines to remember Father Stan in their prayers for the deceased.  His funeral and burial were at Blue Cloud Abbey on January 26.  May he rest in peace.