De­siree See­baran

On this day 100 years ago, a group of Bene­dic­tine monks woke up to sur­vey their new home, a co­coa plan­ta­tion that over­looked Tu­na­puna in east Trinidad. Pho­tos of their ear­li­est habi­ta­tion show a rough cot­tage made of wood and branch­es, the "tapia hut," as they called it.

To­day, the Abbey of Our La­dy of Ex­ile at Mount St Bene­dict has be­come one of Trinidad and To­ba­go's sa­cred places. There are sev­er­al stur­dy, well-kept build­ings on the prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing the church, a con­vent and a sem­i­nary. The or­der that over­sees the Mount and its min­istries are Ro­man Catholic, but peo­ple from sev­er­al faiths go there to pray, get coun­sel from the monks, or just to find a place of peace away from the con­stant whirl of life.

"When Mount St Bene­dict start­ed, this place was bar­ren. There were no hous­es or in­sti­tu­tions. It was a set of bush. When the monks came here, from the very first day, peo­ple of all class­es, races, re­li­gions and sizes would fol­low the monks," said John Pereira, ab­bot at the Mount.

"There are very ear­ly re­ports of large pil­grim­ages of in­den­tured East In­di­ans walk­ing up the hill to speak with the monks, and one of the monks was com­mis­sioned to learn Hin­di so that he could com­mu­ni­cate the gospel with these peo­ple."

The idea of Mount St Bene­dict as a place of es­cape is apt, since the abbey was first found­ed as a place of refuge for Bene­dic­tine monks at the Abbey of Bahia in Brazil. Dur­ing the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment was deeply op­posed to the pow­er and in­flu­ence of the Ro­man Catholic cler­gy and tried to di­min­ish that pow­er in sev­er­al ways, in­clud­ing con­fis­cat­ing church prop­er­ty, Pereira said.

Ac­cord­ing to a his­to­ry of the Mount called the Abbey Mount St Bene­dict, the Ab­bott of the Bahia abbey, Dom Mayeul de Caigny, searched for and es­tab­lished the refuge he was look­ing for in Tu­na­puna, pur­chas­ing the prop­er­ty from An­drew Gomez and quick­ly build­ing a home for Bene­dic­tine monks nes­tled in­to the North­ern Range.

Now the chapel and grounds are open to the pub­lic sev­en days a week, with the de­vout light­ing can­dles and pray­ing in front of the sa­cred im­age of Our La­dy of Ex­ile, or just sit­ting on bench­es that over­look panoram­ic vista of the East-West cor­ri­dor and cen­tral Trinidad.

From in­cep­tion in 1912 to to­day, the abbey has weath­ered much-the vast ex­pan­sion of its own phys­i­cal struc­ture, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial up­heavals and 50 years of T&T's in­de­pen­dence. Yes­ter­day, the monks cel­e­brat­ed their 100th an­niver­sary with a spe­cial mass. To­day they launch a com­mem­o­ra­tive DVD to dou­bly ho­n­our this his­tor­i­cal mo­ment.

Pax in Vir­tute (peace in virtue) is em­bla­zoned above one of the arch­es on the church at the Mount, and peace is very in­te­gral to what the Bene­dic­tine monks are do­ing in this place, Pereira said. "The ul­ti­mate aim of a Bene­dic­tine monk is one who strives for [spir­i­tu­al] peace and pur­sues it, and one who seeks to share that peace with oth­ers. So Mount St Bene­dict has come to be known as a place of peace," he ex­plained.

The monks spend time in soli­tude and prayer, seek­ing to get clos­er to God by these meth­ods. But for all their close­ness with God, both in prox­im­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, some may ar­gue that by pulling away out of "re­al life," monks do more harm than good. Why aren't they min­is­ter­ing di­rect­ly among the peo­ple who need them most?

Pereira does not shy away from the crit­i­cism. In fact he says monks are meant to pull away from so­ci­ety, as St Bene­dict did when he be­came dis­il­lu­sioned by the he­do­nis­tic world view of his own Ro­man peers in the sixth cen­tu­ry AD. Pereira him­self has had a fas­ci­nat­ing per­son­al his­to­ry:he had been work­ing at Carib Brew­ery for 11 years as an ac­coun­tant when he be­gan to feel there was more to life than mak­ing beer and mon­ey.

"The fact that we are run­ning away does not mean that we are not in touch with so­ci­ety. The monk is the man who gets away so that he can look at life and at the world from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and get a broad­er im­age, so that when peo­ple come to us who are just see­ing their lit­tle world-'You know, my hus­band beat­ing me,'-we are able to give a broad­er per­spec­tive be­cause we're not in the melee. We are not for­sak­ing the world, we are run­ning away for the sake of the world."

Pereira ad­mits that the RC Church has been shrink­ing glob­al­ly. Over the last ten years, scan­dal over child mo­lesta­tion by priests and cov­er-ups of the abuse by the ad­min­is­tra­tion has dam­aged the church's cred­i­bil­i­ty and in­flu­ence world­wide. The faith­ful are age­ing, and the youngest monk at Mount St Bene­dict is in his mid-thir­ties. One hun­dred years ago, it was not un­com­mon to have sev­er­al young men in their late teens be­come novi­tiates.

Be­cause the Mount be­longs to a wider con­gre­ga­tion of Bene­dic­tine abbeys, the need for new monks is not yet des­per­ate. But the num­ber of lo­cal vo­ca­tions is very low, the ab­bot said, ow­ing to a num­ber of fac­tors, among them shrink­ing fam­i­ly sizes, a raven­ing sex­u­alised cul­ture and the de­crease of the church's in­flu­ence in ar­eas like ed­u­ca­tion.

Monas­tic life is not pe­cu­liar to Ro­man Catholi­cism and peo­ple have al­ways and will al­ways feel the need to pull away from their so­ci­ety in or­der to draw clos­er to God, Pereira said. But he ac­knowl­edges that the Mount, and the church as a whole, may need to rein­tro­duce the con­cepts of liv­ing for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in­stead of self to a new gen­er­a­tion that has not yet been taught an high­er pur­pose than the search for mon­ey and plea­sure.

"The ide­al is that peo­ple would grow to an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the val­ue of a life like this. One idea might be to vis­it schools from time to time and ex­pose this as an­oth­er op­tion for a young man at the age of 18, 19, think­ing what is he go­ing to do with the rest of his life. This is al­so a valid op­tion, and if some­body is will­ing, the op­por­tu­ni­ty is there. So as a church, we need to be a lit­tle bit more like Je­sus and in­vite peo­ple to fol­low us," he said.