Benedictine continues plans to move school to abbey
Jesse Grapes, headmaster of Benedictine High School in Richmond, is hopeful that the school’s plans to move to Mary Mother of the Church Abbey in Goochland County in September 2012 will provide an environment conducive to fostering vocations among Benedictine cadets.
The Benedictine Society of Virginia, which owns the school building on Sheppard Street in Richmond’s Museum District, is currently in negotiations with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to sell the Benedictine High School building and priory.
The two parties have signed a “letter of intent” in which the ownership of the property would be transferred to the VMFA which has said it plans to use the space for classrooms and to set up exhibits.
The purchase price of the Benedictine property has not been disclosed because negotiations have not been finalized, said Father Luke Travers, canonical administrator. Negotiations will include provision for parking privileges for parishioners and visitors of St. Benedict Parish whose church shares the same parking lot as Benedictine High School. The church will continue to be owned by the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
The parking provision for St. Benedict Church is part of the letter of intent.
Father Luke, a Benedictine monk of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, N.J, was appointed administrator of the Richmond abbey in June 2010 after he had made previous visits there at the request of the Benedictines’ American Cassinese Congregation to help review the abbey’s finances.
The Richmond abbey had been without an abbot since the departure of Abbot-Administrator Patrick Moore in 2009.
Benedictine currently has a debt of $2.7 million.
Mr. Grapes said that if the school were to remain at its current location, it would cost at least $7 million “on the low end just to reduce our debt here and refurbish academic buildings to make them viable for the future for the long term.”
“We have not found another way to strengthen the school’s financials other than moving the school, selling our property, getting out of debt and investing in our new school facilities,” Father Luke told The Catholic Virginian.
Benedictine, which is 100 years old this year, plans to move to the building once occupied by the former St. John Vianney Seminary, a diocesan seminary for high school boys which closed in 1978. The 50-acre property on River Road in Goochland County was purchased by Mary Mother of the Church Abbey in the early 1990s.
Mr. Grapes, who is in his first year as headmaster, said the move 12 miles west of the current location would be an easier commute for students.
“Almost 80 percent of our current students live in Short Pump, Glen Allen, Lower Tuckahoe, Midlothian and along the 288 corridor,” he said, pointing out that only seven students now live within walking distance of the school.
“We’re more attractive to future students at the abbey than our facility here,” Mr. Grapes said, adding that Benedictine will continue its long tradition of being “military, all boys and Catholic.”
“It would be better for our students’ lives — in all parts of their day — to be closer to their homes,” he added.
Another major advantage to the move to the abbey would be the visibility of the Benedictine monks among the Cadets.
“If you’re a young man on fire for your faith, you want to be on the front lines of the spiritual battlefields today,” Mr. Grapes said.
“Where are the front lines? It’s with young people, teenagers especially,” he continued.
“I firmly believe a school connected to a monastery is attractive to young vocations.”
Benedictine’s current enrollment is 272 in grades 9 through 12.
Mary Mother of the Church Abbey was established as an independent abbey in 1989 after breaking off from the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey in Belmont, N.C. For decades most of the Benedictine High School faculty were monks who lived in the priory adjacent to the school.
“All except one or two on the faculty were monks,” said David Plageman, a 1958 graduate of Benedictine whose two sons, Charles and Stephen Plageman, and grandson, August Berling, later graduated from the school.
There are 11 professed Benedictine monks at the Richmond abbey. They include Father Adrian Harmening, former headmaster and current president of the school, and Father James Glass, school chaplain.
In addition, Brother Nolte McCarthy, a cloistered Benedictine Oblate who lives at the abbey but is not a professed monk, is director of operations at Benedictine High School.
“I’m very much behind the move. In reality, we have to do it,” Father Adrian told The Catholic Virginian.
Mr. Plageman, a member of St. Bridget Parish, admitted he is not in favor of the school’s plans to move.
“I don’t know this, but I suspect that the debt burden of the monks is forcing them to do something they otherwise might not do,” he said.
In Benedictine’s plans for the future, called “The Next 100 Years,” benefits of the move to the abbey will include 33 percent more classrooms, 40 percent more square feet per classroom, increased military drill space, increased athletic field access and more parking.
Enrollment capacity will be increased from 310 to 500-plus.
A capital campaign will be held to raise money for a bell tower, field house, fine arts wing, field turf and endowment.
The negotiations for selling the property will allow the school to use the current Benedictine gym until the 2014-2015 school year. By that time Benedictine expects to have its new field house behind the school’s main building.
“Negotiations are being handled by wonderful lay people who really care about the school and monastery,” Father Luke told The Catholic Virginian.
He voiced hopes similar to those of Mr. Grapes in that the move will promote vocations.
“I hope wonderful young men will want to join our community,” he said.
None of the currently professed monks of Mary Mother of the Church Abbey attended Benedictine High School. Of the Benedictine alumni over the last 40 years, a few have become priests. They include Father Neal Nichols, a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter who is chaplain of St. Benedict Chapel in Chesapeake; Msgr. John Williams, a priest of the Diocese of Raleigh, NC; Father Dennis Williams, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, and Abbot Placid (David) Solari of Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. The late Msgr. Charles Kelly, who was with the Diocese of Richmond and had been assistant rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome and rector of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, was also a graduate of Benedictine.
“I certainly am appreciative of all that the Benedictine monks have done for Catholic education over the last 100 years in Richmond,” Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo said. “I hope they will continue their tradition of ora et labora (prayer and work) for another 100 years at Benedictine.”
Benedictine continues plans to move school to abbey
by Steve Neill
of The Catholic Virginian
March 7, 2011
Source: http://www.catholicvirginian.org/archive/2011/2011vol86iss10/pages/article2.html
