Ex-monk admits sexual misconduct while under Abp. Hamus at Conception Abbey

A former Benedictine monk who directed a boys choir at a northwest Missouri abbey in the 1980s admitted on Thursday that he had inappropriate sexual relations with several members of the group.

Bede Parry, who led the Abbey Boy Choir of Conception Abbey from 1982 to 1987, told The Kansas City Star that he had sexual contact with five or six of the choir members as well as a student at a Minnesota university.

One of the former choir members filed a lawsuit on Thursday, contending that Parry molested him in 1987 during a summer camp at the abbey.

The lawsuit, filed against Conception Abbey by a Missouri man under the name John Doe 181, alleges that the abbey knew that Parry had sexually abused other students prior to abusing him but covered it up.

"Frankly, those allegations, most of them are true," Parry said in a phone interview with The Star from Las Vegas. "As far as I’m concerned, great harm was done to those people. To lie and not recognize that would be a gross injustice to those folks.

"The whole thing is terrible. I feel so terrible. I’m just praying for everybody, and I ask for prayers."

Most of the inappropriate sexual contact was with males over 18, Parry said. Two of the encounters, he said, involved males ages 16 to 18. He said he has not had inappropriate sexual relations since the 1987 incident.

Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota lawyer who represents the plaintiff, called the situation "a grave institutional failure."

"Bede Parry wasn’t able to control himself, but it was the (Conception Abbey) abbot and the top officials who knew that and made the choice to protect themselves at the peril of many kids and young adults," he said.

Conception Abbey is a Benedictine monastery with a 30-acre campus. It is home to one of the largest Roman Catholic college seminaries in the nation and the largest priest-training center in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The seminary, which the monks run, draws students from about two dozen dioceses in the United States.

Between 1973 and 1979, the lawsuit says, Parry told the Conception Abbey abbot that he had inappropriate sexual contact with three people at the abbey. And in 1981, the lawsuit says, Parry had sexual contact with a student at St. John’s in Minnesota. Parry admitted that misconduct to several people, including abbots at Conception and St. John’s, according to the lawsuit.

Parry confirmed to The Star his three relationships between 1973 and 1979 at Conception Abbey and one in 1981 in Minnesota. He said he reported those incidents to then-abbot Jerome Hanus at Conception Abbey and to the abbot at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.

Hanus is now head of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa. His office did not return phone calls for comment on Thursday.

Parry said he first opened up about his sexual misconduct last fall, when a Seattle area man named Pat Marker showed up at his doorstep. Marker, a sex abuse victim who had attended St. John’s Preparatory School in Minnesota, had learned about Parry while researching other cases from St. John’s.

"I confronted Bede with the allegations ... that took place at St. John’s, and he admitted to the misconduct and expressed remorse but did not disclose any information about the (Conception Abbey) boys choir at that time," Marker said. "After learning he directed the choir, I confronted him again. At first he denied anything but later admitted to misconduct."

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/08/3255149/ex-monk-admits-sexual-misconduct.html#ixzz1dmsmE4Ex

Historic Collegeville Bible is finished

And so began a grand and improbable collaboration between a little Benedictine community in Minnesota and a guy then best known for handwriting the ceremonial marriage documents of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana. Together they produced the only handwritten and illuminated Bible created in the past 500 years, a total of 1,150 artful pages sparkling with gold leaf and jewel-toned colors.

In a triumphal conclusion, "The St. John's Bible, Amen!," a small show featuring the last pages from the final volume, opens Friday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. On view through Nov. 13, the exhibit features just 18 pages from "Letters and Revelation," in which Jackson's colorful illustrations frame and accentuate graceful lines of biblical text.

St. John's took on the project "because it's what monks do," John Klassen, abbot at St. John's Abbey and University, said at an opening ceremony Thursday. "It was a chance to help ignite the spiritual imagination of people around the world."

Calligrapher Donald Jackson surrounded the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Book of Revelation, with symbols of 21st-century life and hardships: tanks, oil rigs, cancer, AIDS and famine.

details at StarTribune

Oil rigs and AIDS?  Yeah, I was hoping for something a bit more appropriate too.  Too bad, this could have been something really exciting even if it did incorporate modern themes.  How does such a fantastic project get so out of touch. 

HT Stella Borealis