Chilean Patagonia (image from MAM)

Br. Sixtus Roslevich describes below some of his connection with the Manquehue Apostolic Movement (MAM), including his time with Abbot Patrick Barry of Ampleforth who was closely associated with the movement in its early stages. Brother Sixtus also relates a crucial vocational moment he experienced while in Chile with the group. With Christmas break complete, the monastery and school welcomed a new group of friends visiting for the rest of the winter term from MAM. The visitors are four college-age young men, all products of the Manquehue schools and currently on their summer break. Ms. Lauren Revay, the assistant director of spiritual life, has been working closely with the group to assist in their integration into school life. She noted in a recent School publication: “They share their love for God, not only in the theological sense through studies but also the personal impact God has had in their lives, helping our students to encounter God as well.”

While the MAM groups focus primarily on lectio divina, teaching this practice of scripture-based prayer to students, the “sharing of the love for God” is bolstered and expanded in an emphasis on “accompanimiento” – essentially making friends, joining in the lives of students as sports fans, participating in various other School activities. This is also seen in the practice of “tutoria,” in which older students serve as mentors, offering positive and supportive to those in the School community. This varied engagement in School life is in fact, most fundamentally, evangelization: of meeting others where they are, accompanying them on their journey. Adding to this their own community’s shared life and practice of lectio, their assistance with the Confirmation retreat, the planning of a “lectio party” to celebrate the term, and much more, the group develops a busy and well-rounded experience, offering a valuable service to the School community.

Our winter visitors (l to r): Matías Grand Vildósola, Martín Rosselot Saavedra,
Vicente Garnham Cifuentes, and Nicolás Matamala Letelier

In addition to this participation in School life, the MAM visitors develop friendships with the monastic community as well and are regularly present for the daily conventual Mass and Vespers. Rooted in a Benedictine spirituality, the visitors routinely express profound gratitude for this opportunity to encounter the monastic life. The gratitude is indeed two-way, as the monastic community has discovered the Chilean visitors to be a dedicated, devout, and inspirational presence. Brother Sixtus Roslevich relates below the personal significance of his own history with the movement, including its influence on his own monastic vocation.

Brother Sixtus Roslevich, O.S.B.

The Movimiento Apostolico Manquehue, or the Manquehue Apostolic Movement (MAM), first appeared on my radar in 2000 when I joined a weekly lectio divina group at the St. Louis Abbey, five years before I entered as a postulant. The group consisted of older Priory School alums, current dads, a Lutheran veterinarian and assorted other hangers-on – like me. One of our spiritual leaders was Abbot Patrick Barry, superior of Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, England, from 1984 to 1997. Abbot Patrick was in residence in St. Louis at the time and a great proponent and spiritual leader also of the lay Benedictine movement in Chile. Those in my group, too, were laymen and quite happy and successful in our various spheres of commerce but eager to get closer to God.

In October 2001, a mere four weeks after the devastation of 9/11, two young men bravely flew from Santiago de Chile to St. Louis to explain to our group the method of lectio called “scrutinization” as practiced by MAM. Rafael and “Pipo” fanned embers into glowing coals within us, inviting any of us men who were able to journey to Chile for Semana Santa (Holy Week), the Holy Triduum and Eastertide 2002. Within weeks, not only Abbot Patrick, but St. Louis Oblates Wayne and Michael and I booked airline tickets and accepted their welcoming call. For me, it was the most profound and deeply moving spiritual experience of my life to that point.

A “Saint-Paul-falling-off-the-horse” moment came over me on Easter Wednesday in the Octave, in a field at the MAM retreat compound in the southern Chilean Patagonia, where Abbot Patrick was celebrating an outdoor Mass. He had asked me to do the first reading (in English) which for that day of the Octave is always Acts 3:1-10. The words leapt off the page at me as they never had in the past (clue: it’s about John and Peter, about silver and gold). Halfway through, I had tears dripping off my face onto the lectionary. The Chilean schoolboys on that 2002 retreat with us must have thought I had altitude sickness. In a way I did. I was giddy about something higher indeed. Three years later I entered the abbey as a postulant and I credit Abbot Patrick and Jose Manuel Eguiguren (and Rafael and “Pipo”) with encouraging and supporting my vocation.

Jonny Miller (Portsmouth), Pascual Soza (MAM), Brother Sixtus, and Rafael (Rafa) Carvalho (MAM) at Lourdes.
Rafa is the son of the Rafael Carvalho who led the MAM lectio divina in St. Louis in 2001.

I have told this story a hundred times, often in much greater detail, and I fall apart every time. My friend Fr. Benedict in St. Louis will attest to this. On our mission together to Chile in November 2019, we spoke to school groups, young alums, faculty, oblates. We spoke in classrooms, at lunches, at parties, at retreats. Some had heard the story before, including a few of the same schoolboys who were on that 2002 retreat and are now teachers and full-grown Oblates in the MAM schools. The full impact of the Manquehue involvement at Portsmouth Abbey School may not manifest itself for years to come, but it has already taken root. The connections exist and are strengthening. We Americans reached out to them when their country was in a threatening downward spiral in 2019 and more recently in 2020, they reciprocated with prayers and words of solace when our own cities throughout the U.S. were in flames.

Since that first life-changing journey to Chile in 2002, I have made three subsequent visits. In 2005, as Abbot Patrick’s health was faltering, I was assigned to be his Infirmarian and secretary in St. Louis, while still a novice. Around that time, he wrote A Cloister in the World, the definitive history of the early years of MAM which I proofread for him and helped edit. The good abbot eventually felt the urge to return to his beloved Ampleforth. We remained close until his death at age 98 on February 21, 2016. The Times of London eulogized him as “the mentor of a radical educational experiment in Chile.” May he rest in peace.