Religion: Blessing at Buckfast

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In the hills of Devon, in western England, some 30 years ago, "Black Monks"† of the Benedictine order pulled aprons over their rough black robes, began a task which would have stumped most men. They undertook to rebuild Buckfast Abbey, crumbled to ruins in the 360-odd years since Henry VIII had dissolved England's monasteries.

Laying up stone by stone under the direction of their German-born Lord Abbot, Dom Anscar Vonier, the Benedictines—never numbering more than a half-dozen at a time—labored for 25 years. Their abbey was consecrated in 1932. But the scaffolding on the great tower of Buckfast was not removed until last December. A few days later death came to wise and kindly Abbot Vonier, 63.

Benedictines—an order midway between the other-worldly Franciscans and the activist Dominicans and Jesuits—are vowed to "Stability, Conversion of morals 2nd Obedience." Each Benedictine community lives very much to itself, without undue interference from the Benedictine Abbot General in Rome. So, upon the death of Abbot Vonier, the Buckfast monks met together to elect a successor, whom the Abbot General in due course approved. Their choice was a German-born monk (now a British subject) named Dom Bruno Fehrenbacher, who 28 years ago became a Benedictine upon hearing of the work in progress at Buckfast. Dom Eruno, at his election, was laboring at a task assigned him by the Abbot General—teaching Uniat (Eastern Catholic) Syrian priests in the Holy Land.

Last week the Buckfast monks and lay brothers busied themselves redding up the abbey as well as performing their usual work at their beehives and their huge wine casks (they sell honey, market a "Buckfast Tonic," the latter described by rival Benedictines as "good port spoiled by adding something or other"). This week Buckfast expected 1,000 visitors for the 'Blessing" of Lord Abbot Fehrenbacher by the Bishop of Plymouth. This rite, resembling a bishop's consecration, entitles (he abbot—like a bishop—to pontificate at Mass, sit on a throne under a canopy, carry a crozier (crook), wear a mitre.