Threshold - Winter 2005

Oblates Attend World Congress in Rome


Group picture taken in Rome of the Oblate Congress delegates.

The spirituality of St. Benedict is not just for Benedictines in monasteries. For a thousand years, there have been lay people who have united themselves to a monastery as oblates. They come from all walks of life and many different Christian denominations. This September, for the first time, they also came from all over the world for the first World Congress for Benedictine Oblates in Rome.

From September 19 to 25, they heard speakers from around the world, saw the pope and many important religious shrines, prayed together and shared their common bond. The delegates from thirty-five countries were selected by those monasteries which were chosen by lottery to participate. Because there are several Mount oblate groups and each could be included in the lottery, Mount St. Scholastica was lucky enough to be able to send two delegates.

Bonnie Haghirian of St. Joseph, Missouri, has been active in her parish of St. Joseph’s Co-Cathedral and in religious activities of the diocese. She currently teaches at Notre Dame de Sion High School in Kansas City. An Atchison native, she was taught by the sisters and sees her affiliation with them as coming home. “It was a simple ‘yes’ to a way of life that had always been a part of me,” she explains. “I hungered for that rhythm of prayer and work in my adult life.”

John Gioia lives in Overland Park, Kansas, and is employed by Sprint. He first became acquainted with the sisters while attending Benedictine College and later discovered the oblate program. “I chose to become an oblate to help me achieve balance in my life. Studying the rule allows me to integrate my spirituality and monastic practices so that my spirituality is not an isolated event, but part of my every day life.”

They were selected from among the more than 100 professed oblates of Mount St. Scholastica to attend the congress in Rome. To be considered, an oblate had to be an active and regular participant in their oblate group and be willing and able to finance their participation, be a good representative of their community and be willing to share their experiences on their return.

Speakers included European professionals, an Orthodox priest, a Muslim scholar and an Indian nun, aided by simultaneous translation for the listeners. Much of the education also came from the other participants. “In our conversations, we found many common experiences in living our faith, nurtured by the Rule of St. Benedict,” says Haghirian.

Gioia was also energized by the experience.“The speakers have offered many challenges, to continue to transform myself so that I might go out and transform the world, even if it might be in some small way. As Norvene Vest stated, we need to go out and plant seeds. She referred to Wangari Maathai as a modern day seed planter.” The Atchison community was, in fact, the only monastery referred to by name, as the speaker cited the example of the Nobel Prize winner as a person in whom Benedictine values have changed the world. Abbot Primate Notker Wolfe encouraged the group to “come home” to their monasteries to be renewed and then, as Haghirian explains, “we can return to our world community able to live the ways of the Gospel.”




Bonnie Haghirian and John Gioia stand by a poster from the meeting in Rome. They brought this and other materials to share with the rest of the Mount’s oblates at this year’s Oblate Renewal Day.










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