-
April 23, 2018
Benedictine abbots, abbesses, monks, and nuns gathered in Rome to mark the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the Benedictine Confederation by Pope Leo XIII. The jubilee celebration opened with a private papal audience in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace on April 19, 2018. Abbot Elias Lorenzo, O.S.B., in his role as President of the International Commission on Benedictine Education, led a delegation of twenty students and teachers to represent the more than 190 Benedictine secondary schools at the jubilee festivities.
The Benedictine Confederation is a union of 19 monastic congregations that nevertheless retain their own autonomoy, as Pope Leo XIII established in his brief "Summum Semper" (12 July 1893). Most Benedictine monasteries of monks belong to one of these 19 monastic congregations. Each of these congregations elects its own Abbot President. These presidents meet annually in the Synod of Presidents. Additionally, there is a meeting every four years of the Congress of Abbots, which is made up of all abbots and conventual priors, and elects the Abbot Primate, who serves a four-year term as the Confederation's representative head, although without direct jurisdiction over the individual congregations.
The Confederation has its headquarters at Sant'Anselmo, on the Aventine Hill, in Rome, Italy, which is the seat of the Abbot Primate and hosts the quadrennial Congress of Abbots. Sant'Anselmo is also home to an international Benedictine College and Pontifical Athenaeum, with three distinct faculties of philosophy, theology, and sacred liturgy. More than 100 monks from 30 different nations reside at the College of Sant'Anselmo.
The jubilee celebrations concluded with a solemn Pontifical Mass at the Basilica Sant'Anselmo, presided by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, on April 21, 2018, the Solemnity of St. Anselm, and a festive dinner in the monastic refectory for visiting abbots president, abbots, abbesses, monks, nuns, oblates, teachers, students, and benefactors.