Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

On a warm Sun­day af­ter­noon, the carpark of Mount St Bene­dict is packed. Not every­one is there to pray, and not every­one there is Catholic.

Sev­er­al pic­nic blan­kets lay across the es­planade, with fam­i­lies en­joy­ing a snack while chil­dren play. It’s a safe space for an af­ter­noon out with the fam­i­ly. They come from dif­fer­ent walks of life in T&T and dif­fer­ent re­li­gions.

We meet a fam­i­ly that has come from San­gre Grande. They de­cid­ed to take an af­ter­noon dri­ve. Some women wear their hi­jab, and oth­er men wear their thobe.

For over a cen­tu­ry, Mount St Bene­dict has been the cen­tral point for the amal­ga­ma­tion of dif­fer­ent cul­tures and re­li­gions from T&T.

To­day, ‘The Mount’, as it is com­mon­ly called, marks 112 years since it was es­tab­lished. There is a sense of sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween those who seek qui­et, per­son­al refuge on the Mount and its his­tor­i­cal be­gin­nings.

In 1912, Ab­bot Mayeul de Caigny of the Abbey of San Se­bas­t­ian in Brazil wrote Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain, John Pius Dowl­ing, seek­ing to es­cape re­li­gious per­se­cu­tion and refuge in T&T.

Arch­bish­op Dowl­ing would wel­come the monks of San Se­bas­t­ian, and up­on a lot of land where Mount St Bene­dict now stands, they would build what is now the old­est Bene­dic­tine monastery in the Caribbean.

Mount St Bene­dict, al­so known as the Abbey of Our La­dy of Ex­ile, was ded­i­cat­ed to the Blessed Vir­gin Mary when she was seek­ing refuge in Egypt. It be­came an abbey in 1947, be­ing oc­cu­pied by monks.

Mount St Bene­dict—Built for every­one

Though a monastery for monks un­der the am­bit of the Ro­man Catholic Church, one of the unique things about Mount St Bene­dict is that it wel­comes peo­ple of all re­li­gions in­to its church and on­to its com­pound.

This isn’t a mod­ern-day oc­cur­rence. In fact, Ab­bot John Pereira, who has head­ed the monastery since No­vem­ber 2003, said it has been like that since its in­cep­tion. In the ear­ly days of Mount St Bene­dict, Hin­dus who came on in­den­tured ships from In­dia and Mus­lims who came from Africa vis­it­ed the Mount reg­u­lar­ly.

Pereira said be­cause they didn’t have mon­ey to leave as an of­fer­ing, the Hin­dus and Mus­lims would leave jew­ellery as an of­fer­ing in­stead. That jew­ellery was even­tu­al­ly melt­ed by the monks and made in­to a pil­grim chal­ice.

“So when we raise this chal­ice dur­ing Mass, it’s not just for Catholics but for Hin­dus, Mus­lims, and Bap­tists who all con­tributed jew­ellery that was melt­ed in­to one,” Pereira told the Sun­day Guardian last week when he sat down with us for an in­ter­view ahead of the 112th an­niver­sary.

As it was over a cen­tu­ry ago, so it is to­day, the ab­bot said. He fur­ther ex­plained, “When this monastery was be­ing set up, apart from the hus­tle and bus­tle of the East­ern Main Road, some of these peo­ple saw in this place an an­swer to that void that was es­tab­lished where they were forcibly tak­en away from their con­ti­nent and sub­con­ti­nent.

“And so, from the very first day the monks ar­rived here, peo­ple just came here, part­ly out of cu­rios­i­ty but part­ly out of a yearn­ing to re-es­tab­lish that con­nec­tion be­cause a lot of the struc­tures were no longer there.”

Now, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, that yearn­ing still holds true. Pereira added, “Some peo­ple do not see this monastery as a Catholic Church; they see it as a place where God can be sought and found, as a place where they can go and un­bur­den their trou­bles and de­pres­sions, and they do so some­times in the church with­out speak­ing to the monks, or sit­ting on the es­planade re­flect­ing on life, or some­times they share their thoughts with one of the broth­ers.”

The im­pact of ‘The Mount’

and tast­ing pax

Though the monks of Mount St Bene­dict live pri­vate­ly away from the eye of the pub­lic, their im­pact through­out the decades has been defin­ing for T&T and the wider re­gion. Broth­er Gabriel Mokveld, who is cred­it­ed with the ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­signs and ex­e­cu­tion of the monastery build­ing, would go on to leave his fin­ger­print else­where.

He de­signed and built the Sem­i­nary of St John Vian­ney and the Ugan­dan Mar­tyrs, the For­gar­ty in San Fer­nan­do, the Abbey School, Saint Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do, Fuller­ton RC in Ce­dros, and sev­er­al church­es in St Vin­cent.

On a so­ci­etal lev­el, the ab­bot ad­mits Mount St Bene­dict is of­ten re­gard­ed as be­ing lo­cat­ed in a hotspot com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a long and wind­ing dri­ve up St John’s Road to reach The Mount.

How­ev­er, he said Mount St Bene­dict of­fers a life away from crim­i­nal­i­ty.

He said, “We are of­fer­ing here as an al­ter­na­tive. Our life of pax is counter-cul­tur­al, and peo­ple liv­ing in the world—those with busi­ness­es, those who have jobs and are try­ing to sup­port a fam­i­ly and have to make ends meet—be­come frus­trat­ed at times. They of­ten see the monastery as a way to taste some of that pax.” Pax is the Latin word for peace.

A mod­ern Mount to meet the fu­ture

The his­tor­i­cal Mount St Bene­dict has been ad­vanc­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly to meet the needs of the 21st cen­tu­ry. The Mount Tele­vi­sion Net­work is in its de­vel­op­men­tal stages, and the ab­bot hopes one day it can be ful­ly op­er­a­tional. Mass­es and prayers are of­ten streamed live on The Mount’s Face­book page to meet a dig­i­tal au­di­ence.

He ad­mits the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced the monks to com­mu­ni­cate dif­fer­ent­ly. “We felt that al­though we loved liv­ing here on our own and cut off, we felt that there was a need to con­nect with peo­ple who have a pas­sion for God and who have been com­ing here reg­u­lar­ly,” Pereira said.

But when it comes to the fu­ture, the con­ver­sa­tion sur­round­ing vo­ca­tions can­not be avoid­ed. At present, there are eight monks in the monastery, many of them el­der­ly.

When asked whether he fears for the fu­ture of the monastery giv­en the drop in vo­ca­tions for monas­tic life, Pereira said, “God al­lowed his on­ly son to die, and if he al­lows a monastery to die, it should be no big deal be­cause over the his­to­ry of monas­tic life, there have been great monas­ter­ies like Cluny and so on, which are now ru­ins.

“If you vis­it France, you see some beau­ti­ful ru­ins. But they did what they had to do for a par­tic­u­lar time that they had to do it. The ac­tu­al pur­pose of the monk is to seek God above every­thing else, and once we are here, we try to live that way of life.”

Pereira said one of the chal­lenges of the monastery was the lack of knowl­edge. He in­sists that while a lot of young men come to the monastery, they don’t make that “quan­tum leap” that maybe they can be part of it.

In con­sid­er­ing the fu­ture, the monks, how­ev­er, are fo­cused on the present, gain­ing op­ti­mism and con­fi­dence in the 112-year his­to­ry of the monastery.