Dom Bernardus Peeters, Abbot of Tilburg, Netherlands entered the Trappists in 1986 at the Abbey of Our Lady of Koningshoeven in Berkel-Enschot, the Netherlands, at the age of 18. He was ordained a priest in 1997 and has led Tilburg Abbey since 2005.

The new Abbot General said the Trappists were primarily looking for someone "who has the ability to be creative in looking for new things". Dom Peeters has been recognised for the way he has introduced innovation in his previous role.

In 2020, Peeters began a unique experiment in his monastery when he started a digital novitiate.

A few weeks ago, the first new monks who went through the online programme physically entered the monastic community.

Peeters started the online programme to get people "interested in monastic life in our time". And to develop a system to make sure that the quality is good.

The digital novitiate starts with a website that shows the whole process up to the final commitment through the testimonies of brothers. Behind that website is a series of six newsletters on major themes.

Since the start of the programme, some 80 people have followed the course, including a number of women. "You don't hear anything back from a large number of them, and that's not a bad thing" commented Peters.

Those interested have to come to an answer as to whether they really want this life. If they do, they write to the abbot and the actual contact begins.

The Trappists are known for producing beer and cheese and have done so since the middle ages.

Not as well known - they have been making chocolate since the nineteenth century. According to Peeters, "part of the proceeds are intended for mutual solidarity between monasteries, but a large part is also used to help people who need it".

OSCO is present in 40 countries on all continents, with more than 200 monasteries both male and female.

"Together, we form one order, which is very unique in the Church. The only thing sisters can't do with us is become abbot general, but the rest is completely equal" Peeters said.

Sources

La Croix International

Paudal

Last week, in response to the coronavirus, the 22 monks living in the abbey, about 13 miles from Dubuque, decided to offer pine caskets Continue reading

"The body of Christ which is the Church, like the human body, was first young, but at the end of the world it will have an appearance of decline." — St. Augustine

As I sat with Brother Marcel Zhang, OCSO (b. 1924), in his Beijing apartment, I thumbed through his private photographs of Yangjiaping Trappist Abbey. Some were taken before its destruction in 1947, and some he had taken during a recent visit to the ruins. What was once a majestic abbey church filled with divine prayer and worship had been reduced to debris and an occasional partial outline of a gothic window. When the People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacked the monastery in 1947 and began its cruel torments against the monks, Zhang was one of the monks. He shared with me some of his recollections, no doubt at great risk. As we looked at a picture of the Abbey church as it appears today, where the monks gathered for daily Mass prior to 1947, Zhang paused to contemplate the ruins. "It's already gone . . . already, the church is like this," he said, insinuating that the ruins of the Abbey "church" metaphorically represented the "Church" in China, still haunted by the past, still tormented in the present.1

After the People's Court had demanded the collective execution of the monks of Our Lady of Consolation Abbey at Yangjiaping, the Trappists were bound in heavy chains or thin wire, which cut deeply into their wrists, and were confined to await their punishments. Brother Zhang recalled that during the many trials, Party officials presiding over the interrogations accused the Trappists of being, "wealthy landlords, rich peasants who exploit poor peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad eggs, and rightists". Essentially, they were charged with all of the "crimes" commonly ascribed to the worst classes in the Communist list of "bad elements."2 Normally, only one of these accusations was sufficient to warrant an immediate public execution, but some of the accused from the abbey were foreigners, and news that Nationalist forces were on their way to save the monks alarmed the Communist officers. Punishments had to be inflicted on the road, on what became the Via Crucis of the Trappist sons of Saint Benedict. More interrogations were staged during stops, and Brother Zhang noted that new trials, or "struggle sessions" (鬥爭) as he called them, were orchestrated at every village. Zhang himself was questioned more than twenty times at impromptu People's Courts. He remembered that he was treated with much more leniency than the priests, as he was still only a young seminarian in 1947. The priests were much more despised. "After the interrogations," Zhang recalled, "we would go out to relieve ourselves, and I saw the buttocks of the priests, which were red [from their beatings]; the flesh hung off like meat."3 Chinese Catholics who know about the Yangjiaping incident refer to these torments as a "siwang xingjun," 死亡行軍 or a "death march," and this is when most of the Trappists who died received their "palms of martyrdom." Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Historvius