Abbot Martin Burne and Independence for Newark

1967 began for St. Mary's Abbey as a year of high hope and new energy. On 2 February, a vigorous and zealous Martin Burne was blessed as coadjutor abbot of St. Mary’s Abbey by Bishop Lawrence Casey of Paterson. Less than two months later, on 30 March, Abbot Patrick died in Florida, leaving Martin Burne as fifth abbot of St. Mary’s Abbey. Abbot Patrick was laid to rest in the old St. Mary’s Cemetery in East Orange.

The newly elected Abbot Martin assumed the responsibility for a community numbering one hundred thirty men and encompassing the priory in Newark, the abbey in Morristown, two secondary schools, the administration of eight parishes, and the Brazilian mission. In the eyes of many he was the man for whom the community had been waiting, always the decisive voice in meetings of the Chapter, the very model of leadership. 

A 1932 graduate of St. Benedict’s Prep, after several indecisive years Martin entered the Benedictine novitiate at St. Vincent and was professed in 1935. He was ordained in 1940, and served as a chaplain in the Navy, seeing action with the Marines in the South Pacific campaigns of World War II. After the war, he resumed his role as head of the music department, director of the glee club, band, and teacher of German at St. Benedict’s. The musical program came to life again under his leadership. During summers and at night he earned his doctorate from New York University, all the while serving as weekend assistant at St. Rose of Lima Church in Short Hills.

Abbot Patrick appointed Father Martin prior at Newark in 1958 but he resigned a little over one year later and asked to serve as parochial assistant at Sacred Heart Church in Elizabeth.  In 1965, Abbot Patrick appointed him novice master in the newly established novitiate in Morristown, in which office he served one year until his election as abbot.

Abbot Martin made a number of significant changes during his first year in office. He appointed Father Lawrence Grassman to succeed Father Mark Confroy as headmaster of St. Benedict’s, and Father Francis O’Connell to succeed Father Stephen who had been headmaster of Delbarton School for twenty-five years.

Parallel to the internal changes in St. Mary’s Abbey, major shifts had taken place in the demographics of Newark and northern New Jersey. Large numbers of African-Americans had been moving north for many decades and this great migration was accelerated by the war and its aftermath. The ethnic population of Newark and of its suburbs had changed radically. During the summer of 1967 Newark suffered a kind of passion with civil disturbances which caused massive physical and moral devastation to the city and accelerated the flight to the suburbs of what remained of the white middle-class, the population from which St. Benedict’s had traditionally drawn its students. The post-war decades had also transformed Morris County from a rural to a suburban environment.

Abbot Martin made every effort to respond to the high hopes and enthusiasm with which he had begun his new office. He frequently visited the priory in Newark and even convened meetings of the Chapter there. Ultimately, he came to the conclusion, however, that he could not be abbot in two places. On 14 October 1968 Abbot Martin presented to the Chapter what amounted to an ultimatum: either vote to petition the Holy See for the independence of Newark or elect a new abbot. The resolution was approved by a vote of seventy-five to thirty-five with one abstention. This time, with the support of the abbot and a new archbishop, the petition was successful and on 21 November 1968 Newark Priory was canonically erected as an independent abbey. The Chapter of the new Newark Abbey gathered, on 14 December 1968, to elect its first abbot, Ambrose Clark.