blue cloud abbey
VOL. 24 NO. 1 MARVIN SD 57251-0098 WINTER 2012
For several past Advents, Brother Francis Kopel’s refrain has been, “This will be my last Christmas.” He got it right this time. Brother Francis died on December 12, 2011. His death occurred in early morning on his ninety-second birthday. An employee of the nursing home was singing Happy Birthday to him as he passed from this life and into the next.
Brother Francis was born near Donnelly, Minnesota. His parents and their nine children later moved to a farm near Avoca. After graduating from high school,
Brother Francis held various jobs on farms and in town. He was living with his widowed mother in Olivia. Minnesota when he heard about Blue Cloud Abbey. He was almost forty years old when he came to the monastery in 1958. Near the end of his novitiate, he expressed a desire to become a claustral oblate rather than profess vows. Almost thirty years later, he professed vows. The abbot had indicated to him that by now his monastic vocation appeared quite stable. From the time of his arrival at Blue Cloud Abbey until his death, he lived fifty-three years in the Benedictine life.
Brother Francis was an assistant in our laundry until 1963 when he was assigned to Immaculate Conception Mission at Stephan, South Dakota where he worked in the boarding school laundry. Returning to Blue Cloud in 1971, he was the sacristan and mail carrier until his retirement due to failing health. An injury sustained from a fall in his room necessitated Brother Francis’s going to St. William Care Center in Milbank. He was told that once the cast was removed from his arm, he could come back to the abbey. Brother Francis chose to stay where he was. It
was a wise decision because his health continued to decline. His funeral and burial were here on December 16th.
Father Pedro Choc, the prior of Resurrection Priory in Guatemala, visited us in December. St. Patrick’s parish in Edina, Minnesota held a fund raiser for the priory and he was present for it. Father Pedro does not speak English but he communicates with friendly gestures and other pleasantries. Here at Blue Cloud he spoke Spanish with our three confreres who had been assigned to Resurrection Priory over the years. Kekchi, however, is his first language. Father Pedro used an English word several times in the course of the meals he took with us. “Delicious,” he said. Father Pedro was the first Guatemalan to make final vows at our foundation and the first to be ordained. Now he is the first native superior of the community.
In July Brother Sebastian Goldade was asked to make a mitre for Bishop Robert Gruss, newly named to the Diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota. Brother Sebastian has recently converted the aviary into a display area for articles available from his vesture studio.
Amelia Cordell, who cared for the birds all through high school, is now in her first year of college. None of the monks wanted to assume responsibility for the birds. So, we got rid of them by advertising free birds. Within a week they were all gone. Although visitors and monks enjoyed watching the birds (all finches at the end), a vestment display case is easier to maintain than an aviary.
Brother Sebastian has been making and selling vestments for many years. He uses cloth from Guatemala in several of his designs. More information about vestments may be found on our webpage: www.bluecloud.org. Click on vestments.
Oblates were here again for their annual retreat in September. They came from the Dakotas and Minnesota and Manitoba. And they are fewer nowadays than in the past when we scheduled two oblate retreats yearly.
Our annual community retreat has been moved from January to springtime. The winter weather often threatened to keep the retreat master from arriving or
from leaving afterwards. At this writing in the first part of January, there is neither snow on the ground nor any in the forecast.
The temperatures have been warm enough for the handball enthusiasts to play several games on Sunday afternoons. And Father Michael Peterson, who up to now has gone into the water every month of the year accept January, took the plunge without having to break a hole in the ice.
The Farewell Party
Diane Knutson, an oblate, and her husband Rick have thrown a Christmas party for a good number of years. They have hosted two parties actually: one for the town of Summit, seven miles down the road from here, and one for us and their other friends. There will be no more parties. This was the last one. The building is for sale.
One year upon our arrival at the Christmas party, we were greeted by other guests bearing a resemblance to Groucho Marx.
Well, he didn’t go very far into the water
Father Timothy Sweeney of St. Meinrad’s Archabbey, our mother abbey in Indiana, is with us for sixth months. Father Timothy was the Archabbot of St. Meinrad’s from 1978 until 1995. He is the assistant archivist at his monastery and is helping Father Christopher Uehlein reorganize our archives.
Over the past year, three men have come here to use the archives. All three are college teachers: two Americans looking at the missionary journals of Father Pius Boehm, a St. Meinrad monk who worked on the Crow Creek Reservation here in South Dakota and a history professor from Switzerland who is writing a biography of Bishop Martin Marty. A truthful biography he said and not hagiography.
BISHOP MARTIN MARTY, OSB
Martin Marty came from Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland to what appeared its floundering foundation in the United States. The monastery survived and he became the first abbot but had a short reign of only nine years. In 1876 he went to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to examine the possibility of establishing a monastery in Indian country. This did not happen, however, until 1950 with the founding of Blue Cloud Abbey. The community at St. Meinrad did not appreciate the abbot’s involvement so far from home. Neither did the Bishop of Vincennes in whose diocese the abbey was located. Marty had not consulted the chapter or his council about going to Dakota—no one knew until the eve of his departure.
In 1879 he was named Vicar Apostolic of the whole Dakota Territory. Marty brought Swiss Benedictine Sisters to the area and Irish Presentation Sisters and exiled Jesuits from Germany. He sought financial aid for the Indian missions from a wealthy family in Philadelphia. St. Katharine Drexel wrote in a 1922 letter: “It was due, I think, to these visits of Bishop Marty that as a young I girl I became interested in the Indian missions.”
Martin Marty became the first Bishop of Sioux Falls in 1889 and then Bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota in 1895. He died a year later. When Martin Marty was consecrated Vicar Apostolic of Dakota Territory, he had a territory of 150,000 square miles stretching for more that 400 miles from north to south. Apparently, he covered all of Dakota Territory. I knew an elderly woman who had been confirmed by him in Big Stone City, South Dakota in 1882. My pastor in Casselton, North Dakota told me Martin Marty’s signature is recorded there. When he was Bishop of Sioux Falls, a local paper reported his having administered confirmation at Kranzburg. “In honor of the event some people had a jollification in the evening, and among other things done, six persons ate sixteen cans of raw oysters with their fingers, without using knife, fork or spoon.” Many years later our retired first abbot, Gilbert Hess, became the Kranzburg pastor. By the time of his pastorate, such “jollifications” had ceased in Holy Rosary Parish.
Vincent de Paul Wehrle, another monk of Einsiedeln wanted to make a monastic foundation in Dakota. The abbot in Switzerland told him, “No one from here wants to volunteer or to be sent. Dakota has a bad name.” The foundation was made and is now Assumption Abbey at Richardton, North Dakota. Benedictines in the Dakotas are grateful to their Swiss ancestors for sticking with it.
Br. Benet Tvedten, OSB
Abbot Denis Quinkert, OSB blessing the community
and guests in our abbey church after singing the Salve at Our Lady of Einsiedeln’s altar.