Abbot Ernest Helmstetter

The election of a successor to Abbot Hilary was hastened in order that it might take place during the Christmas vacation when all might be able to participate. All but one of the forty-one capitulars was present on the evening of 3 January 1910 for the initial business of the election Chapter.

On the morning of 4 January at nine o’clock all assembled in the chapter room and formed a procession to the church for the Mass invoking the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Following the Mass the balloting began and on the second ballot Prior Ernest Helmstetter had obtained the necessary two thirds votes. The election was then made unanimous by the chapter.

The newly elected abbot was born 7 October 1859 in that part of the city of Newark called the Neck. As a boy he attended St. Benedict’s School in the parish administered by the abbey. He continued his studies at the abbey’s St. Benedict’s College for two years and, intending to enter the monastery, in 1874 moved on to St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. He entered the novitiate in July of 1878 and made his first profession as a monk of St. Vincent Abbey the following year. He continued his studies at St. Vincent and was ordained to the priesthood in June of 1884, the same year in which St. Mary’s became an independent abbey.

Father Ernest was among the initial group which transferred its stability to the new abbey in Newark. Abbot James first sent him to teach in the high school the community was endeavoring to conduct in Wilmington. After that school closed Father Ernest was recalled to Newark and assigned to teach at St. Benedict’s College where he remained for the next twenty-five years until his election as abbot in 1910.  Abbot Hilary, meanwhile, appointed him prior in 1889, added the office of procurator in 1891 and on two different occasions asked him to serve as director of the college. At the time of his abbatial election, at the age of fifty-one, he was clearly a man of wide experience and tested ability. He was also clearly a Newark oriented man having been born, raised and schooled in St. Mary’s parish.

The feast of St. Benedict, 21 March, fell during Holy Week in 1910 so the celebration was transferred to 5 April and was the day chosen for the blessing of Abbot Ernest by Bishop O’Connor of Newark. Abbot Ernest took up his duties with a vim that made all feel that a new era was about to begin for the abbey. As an experienced educator he set about enhancing the academic standards of the two institutions in his charge, St. Benedict’s and St. Anslem’s. Facilities were added in both Newark and Manchester, and during his abbacy both institutions reached capacity enrollments. Meanwhile the number of monastic vocations grew. Parishes administered by the abbey were in flourishing condition and increased in number with the addition St. Elizabeth in Linden and St. Joseph in Hilton, now Maplewood, New Jersey.

During the General Chapter of the American Cassinese Congregation held at St. Vincent Archabbey in the summer of 1914, Abbot Ernest Helmstetter was elected President of the Congregation, an office which he continued to hold for twenty-eight years, the longest term in the history of the Congregation. He was granted the privilege of wearing the cappa magna by Pope Pius IX in 1929 and of wearing the violet skull cap in 1934.  Abbot Ernest died on 9 July 1937, aged 78.