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New Church and New Abbot
1966 marked the realization of Abbot Patrick’s dream of a great new monastery and church in Morristown, but was also the year of his resignation and the preparations for the election of his successor.
The altar of the new abbey church was consecrated by Abbot Primate Benno Gut, and the church itself was consecrated by Archbishop Boland of Newark on 15 and 16 July 1966. The following October Abbot Patrick announced to the community that he had requested a coadjutor abbot. He had been abbot of St. Mary’s Abbey for almost thirty years. Under his aegis Delbarton School was born and grew to robust youth; new buildings were erected in both Newark and Morristown, and the community grew from the eighty-four members listed in the Ordo of 1937 to one-hundred thirty in 1967, the year of Abbot Patrick’s death.
His long tenure, despite all its turmoil, could justly be regarded as a golden age of St. Mary’s Abbey. Often absent due to perennial ill health, now in his eighty-first year, his always limited strength had ebbed markedly. On 28 November 1966 the community gathered in Morristown to elect a coadjutor abbot. The choice quickly fell on Father Martin Burne.