Ab. Michael Brunner (at right) at San Benito School in Santiago
with St. Louis Priory School

In my entry into monastic life, my co-novice master was Abbot Patrick Barry, the retired Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey, who lived with us in St. Louis for part of the year. The other part of the year he lived in Santiago, Chile with a unique religious community/ movement named “The Manquehue Apostolic Movement.” I had never heard of them. But Abbot Patrick created a relationship between St. Louis Abbey and this movement. Eventually, we had students from Santiago study at our school in St. Louis, and some members of the movement came to visit. When I became Director of Chaplaincy in the school I was invited to visit Santiago, where this movement operates three pre-K to 12 schools. I was excited to go, but some monks were skeptical that this movement had anything to teach us. As I found out, they were very wrong. There is so much we in the United States do not know about the rest of the world, even about our own hemisphere. I certainly learned a lot as this article will outline, but I was also most impressed by Chile, where you can stand on the coast near Valparaiso and see the width of the country into Argentina. There are the Andes themselves. And the shrine of St. Teresa de los Andes, a Carmelite mystic from whose tomb you can see a vast stretch of the Andes cordillera, including Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western hemisphere. The vineyards produce wine every bit as good as that of France or California. Chile is not a 2nd or 3rd world country. And this remarkable country was now transitioning from a dictatorship to democracy.

A dinner in Patagonia in 2002; Br. Sixtus Roslevich is third from left; to his immediate left is José Antonio Navarro (now on his third winter visit to Portsmouth); at right is founder, José Manuel EguigurenAnd so I arrived for a ten day visit and was greeted by a couple from England. I learned that several people from the UK had joined this movement and relocated to Chile. After attending Mass – struck by the number of armed soldiers on the streets – I went to stay in one of the oblates houses, where I met Anthony Dore, in our present visiting group. The oblates are official members of the movement who take promises, and may be male, female, married or single. What they promise is to follow the rule of St. Benedict as interpreted by the rule of the Movement. They are rather like lay monks. I met the founder of the movement, José Manuel Eguiguren. The movement grew out of the Confirmation class he taught one year. He did not know what to do, so he went to the Benedictine monastery of The Holy Trinity where the monk he met with advised him to teach using the Benedictine prayer practice of “lectio divina,” engaging with the scriptures on a personal level. So that is exactly what José Manuel did. From this humble beginning grew a movement that now operates three large schools: one at foot of Manquehue mountain in an affluent section of Santiago, one in the inner city and one in the suburbs, as well as a home for women in the city and many adult lectio groups with hundreds of members.

José Manuel is an impressive man, who meets you like an old friend and immediately has something important to tell you. He gave me a book with the acts of the martyrs and talked to me about why he thought it was important. When I went to his home, I met his remarkable son, Ignacio. Ignacio could not speak, could not eat, could not walk, could not move his arms or his body. But he could communicate with his eyes and with non-verbal sounds. He was totally dependent on others for all aspects of his life. And so the members of the movement cooperated in caring for Ignacio, so his parents could do what they needed to for his siblings and the movement. And Ignacio repaid his parents and the movement by praying for them. He was the soul of the movement. He was in his 20’s when I met him, and he died last year when he was in his 40’s.
Fr. Michael Brunner, then headmaster at St. Louis Priory School,
on visit to ChileIn my visits to the schools, I met some students from the U.K. who were spending their gap years working in the schools with lectio groups and tutoria, a concept like mentoring in which older students care for younger students in the schools. It was these two aspects that I had come to see. A group of Form III students (freshmen) at one school invited me to sit in on their lectio group. These peer lectio groups formed after all the Form III students in a school attended a retreat and then the students would voluntarily aggregate into a group with their friends. So I sat in and observed this one group and I was blown away. Without any adult supervision, coaching or prodding, here was a group of 8 teenage boys seriously engaging with the scriptures and applying it to their lives and their relationship with God. If this is what the Movement can produce in students, I thought, we cannot fail to do this in our school. Every year or so, the heads of the Manquehue schools, the English Benedictine schools in the U.K. and our school would meet at a gathering known as CUNACO. At one of these meetings the Manquehue heads suggested they send a group to St. Louis to teach our students lectio. I asked the U.K. schools how that worked when they sent people to the UK. They said it didn’t last. So I said no…don’t come to us; we’ll come to you, learn it and bring it back home.
The Andes (image: Ab. Michael Brunner)And so I began to bring groups, usually of 25, to Chile for 2 weeks of training in lectio and in how to lead a lectio group. I did this for 8 years, and the result has been the lasting practice of lectio and tutoria in the school in St. Louis. On the first group’s day of departure from St. Louis we learned of a massive strike of all high school students in Santiago. We decided to go anyway. While there, we learned that at a meeting of student leaders from all over the city, a group of leftist students were urging the students to violence. But the student leader from one Manquehue school stood up and addressed the assembly and convinced them to reject violence. Good education and good mentors make a difference. The Manquehue movement was also center stage during the worldwide Benedictine Educators Network meeting in Santiago in 2007. During one of our CUNACO meetings we celebrated the formal consociation of the Manquehue Apostolic Movement with the English Benedictine Congregation.
Abbot Patrick Barry with Br. Sixtus Roslevich
on 2002 visit to PatagoniaNorman Vincent Peale wrote a book titled Enthusiasm Makes the Difference. The Manquehue oblates are nothing if not enthusiastic. One oblate is wont to give directions and advice preceded by “You MUST…” She means it. In coming to Portsmouth, I was pleased to reconnect with Catalina Quiroga, whom I had met when she was a student in Chile, her father being head of one of the schools. Her little brother, at his First Communion celebration, told me I should quit smoking. She was now at Portsmouth with her husband, Alvaro Gazmuri, living here for two years, working in Spiritual Life and guiding groups of college students from Santiago who come every year for January and February (their summer) to work with our students. The presence of these college students demonstrates the power of Tutoria, of the young leading and teaching the young. Regardless of how brilliant my classes and homilies are, they are coming from the mouth of a 75 year-old man with a 75 year-old brain who grew up in a very different time. These college students from this time can witness to the Gospel for the high school students of this time.
Winter 2018 MAM group, led by Catalina Quiroga and Alvaro Gazmuri (center), including Javiera Lubascher & Consuelo Ingunza (left);
Clara Tagle & Carmen Luz Hurtado (right)Last year José Manuel retired and the movement began a lengthy and intense period of discernment to choose a new responsable, their title for their leader. Jonathan Perry, an oblate from England, was elected. Jonathan, who functioned for many years as an assistant to José Manuel, is well-positioned to lead the movement forward. He knows the U.K., where Manquehue has an offshoot growing; and he knows his adopted country of Chile well. Above all he knows God and the Rule of St. Benedict. With its leadership now under Jonathan’s direction, we look forward to continuing and growing our relationship with the Manquehue Apostolic Movement.

---

Abbot Michael Brunner served as headmaster at the St. Louis Priory School from 2005-2012, transferring in 2018 to Portsmouth Abbey to become Prior-Administrator and then Abbot of this community. Consistent over those years has been his ongoing friendship with the Manquehue community, which he continues to foster in his work with Spiritual Life programs for the School.