Mission to Brazil

In the late fifties there had come a mandate from Pope John XXIII that American religious communities send personnel to Latin America to counter the inroads of evangelical groups among nominal Catholics. Abbot Patrick informed the community of this request and asked for volunteers. The abbey, at the time, was hard pressed, with two schools and eight parishes under its care. Negotiations with various Latin American bishops ensued, however, and finally on 6 September 1963, Fathers Edmund Nugent and Kevin Bray left for the diocese of Anapolis in the State of Goias, Brazil. In 1964, Father Kevin returned and in May 1966, Father Columba Rafferty set sail for Rio de Janeiro to reinforce the mission, and in July 1967, Father Sebastian Joseph joined Fathers Edmund and Columba. Following intensive language study, the three men took up parochial duties. In January 1971, however, Father Sebastian suffered a fatal heart attack. His body was returned and lies in the Abbey Cemetery in Morristown.

After almost twenty years in Brazil, and due to ill health, Father Columba retired and returned to the abbey in 1985. Ten years later, on 2 August 1995, Father Edmund Nugent, the last of the four monks of St. Mary’s Abbey who had served as missionaries in Brazil, died in Urutai. Although he had expressed a desire to be buried in the parish he had so long served, his body was returned to the United States and is interred in the Abbey Cemetery. Thus ended the Brazilian effort that had begun in 1963 more than thirty years before.

The Brazilian mission had not resulted in a permanent foundation and the extension of the Benedictine Order, as a Boniface Wimmer would have desired. Perhaps the community, hard pressed for personnel, and preoccupied by internal issues, had not invested adequate resources of men and money, with a clear mandate to make such a foundation. Nevertheless, a document dated 1 September 1963 on the Brazil mission states that at some time in the future, Abbot Patrick was convinced that it would do so. The attention of the community for the next few years was focused on nagging internal issues of unity or separation, the death of Abbot Patrick after a thirty year rule, and the election of a new abbot.

It should be noted that the Brazil mission was not the first overseas effort on the part of monks of St. Mary’s. The Catholic University of Peking was originally entrusted by the Holy See to the Benedictines of the American Cassinese Congregation in 1925. American monks were recruited, among them Fathers Gregory Schramm, who had recently obtained a doctorate in psychology from Johns Hopkins University, and Damian Smith, with advanced degrees in biology.  In 1933, the administration of the university was transferred to the Society of the Divine Word because the American Benedictines, in the midst of the Great Depression, were no longer able to sustain it. Gregory and Damian returned to teach at St. Benedict’s.