The monastic community at Portsmouth Abbey was blessed with the arrival on Wednesday night, October 20, of a fourth monk of St. Louis. Under the light of a full moon, Fr. Andrew Senay O.S.B. entered the campus just in time for dinner which was announced, as is usual at Portsmouth, by the gentle sounding of a Buddhist prayer bell by Fr. Gregory. 
 

The trip to Portsmouth itself seemed a kind of pilgrimage. I shared the trip with Fr. Andrew, a journey by truck that covered just under 1,200 miles and was accomplished in 4 leisurely days. En route, Fr. Paul Rubadue O.S.B. hosted us for two nights at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a major Benedictine presence in the U.S. which includes the archabbey and its historic basilica, a seminary, and St. Vincent College. We were both delighted that our stay coincided with the special celebration of their Foundation Day, affectionately called ‘Wimmer Day’ by the community, marking the 175^th anniversary of the arrival of Fr. Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B. and 18 of his companions in the rolling Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylvania in 1846, to found what has become the largest Benedictine monastery in the country, even in the Western Hemisphere. It is also, football fans, the permanent summer training camp of the Pittsburgh Steelers. While the occasion marked Fr. Andrew’s first visit to St. Vincent's, I have been now some forty times.

Brother Sixtus, Abbot Patrick Barry, and Fr. Andrew following Mass in the chapel of the Visitation Academy,
Town and Country, Missouri, with Sr. Mary Catherine Brady VHM (1919-2018), sacristan of the chapel.

While in residence at Portsmouth Abbey for an extended period of time, Fr. Andrew will be taking courses at a local university in anticipation of a higher degree in the physical sciences.  Although he himself is a native of St. Louis, his father, Dr. Leo Senay, 94, was born in Fall River, Massachusetts.  Besides a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts, he completed his Master of Theology degree at the Beda Pontifical College in Rome.  He was ordained a deacon in 2016 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2017 at St. Louis Abbey.  He taught for a time at St. Louis Priory School and has held numerous monastic positions in the abbey there. 

A bon voyage party at Michele Rentschler’s house in St. Louis (she is an inquirer as a Portsmouth Oblate). 
With Sixtus, Andrew and Michele are Tom Rich ’11, Priory School and Jana Woodruff.
 

He is most renowned for his many years of unstinting service as Infirmarian, a rarely used term most common in religious houses for the person who tends to the needs of the elderly, sick and infirm in a particular community and who keeps the supplies stocked in the Infirmary.  Fr. Andrew has logged so many uncountable hours and miles in transporting his confreres to appointments at hospitals, medical and dental offices, emergency rooms, rehab centers and urgent care facilities that he is known by his first name in many of them. Like most monks around the world who assume that role, Fr. Andrew had no previous experience in any of the medical sciences.  He often joked that he was not a medical professional but only played one in his monastery. 

Shortly after his arrival in RI, Andrew visited his father’s birthplace, Fall River MA.
Since he is a big history buff, he asked to visit "Big Mamie" docked at the city’s port.
 

One might say that his initial training came to him in the care of Abbot Patrick Barry OSB (1917-2016), the former superior of Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, England (1984-1997), the founding monastery of St. Louis Abbey.  Traditionally, an abbot who is not re-elected or who retires is allowed to reside for a time in a different monastery in order to give his successor time and space to spread his wings.  Abbot Patrick chose to live in St. Louis where he quickly became ensconced among the monks of the monastery and the schoolboys at Priory where he was sought out for his participation in lectio divina and for his sage wisdom.  The abbot ended up living in Missouri for almost 12 years before returning to England where he died at age 98. After being diagnosed with bladder cancer in St. Louis, his extensive treatments and surgery led to a long period of recovery. During the years of care required, Fr. Andrew and Abbot Patrick forged a bond akin to that of a grandson and grandfather. The aging abbot was also a regular celebrant for Masses at the Visitation Academy, a nearby sister school to Priory, where he was dutifully attended to by Fr. Andrew. Years later, after Abbot Patrick's return to his home monastery at Ampleforth, Fr. Andrew was one of several St. Louis monks who made their way to England to visit him, often taking him into the local village for tea at his favorite old hotel dining room, and to listen to first-hand stories of a monastic way of life rooted in the distant past.   

Fr. Andrew and Brother Sixtus with Fr. Paul Rubadue, O.S.B. at St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe PA,
at the celebration of Foundation Day, the 175^th anniversary to the day of Abbot Boniface Wimmer’s arrival in Western PA. 
Father Paul has known Sixtus since he was a young teenager.
 

We welcome Fr. Andrew to Aquidneck Island.  When you are on campus next, whether in the school or the church, please greet him warmly as the Portsmouth students did at a recent assembly.