A newly-professed monk from Basingstoke has become the first local Catholic to join Douai Abbey since 1903.
On 22 June, Brother Aidan Messenger – who was baptised Thomas – made his solemn profession of vows to Abbot Paul Gunter at Douai Abbey church in Upper Woolhampton, Berkshire.
Brother Aidan, who is 29, said: “I sense that this is the place where God has called me to be,” after professing vows of stability, Conversatio Morum or fidelity to the monastic life and obedience.
The congregation attending the sung Mass for Brother Aidan’s profession included other English Benedictine monks, family and friends including his fellow students from Blackfriars, the Dominican House of studies in Oxford.
Brother Aidan is now a full member of the Douai community, which comprises 13 resident monks who serve the parishes of St Bernadette’s, Pangbourne and St Luke’s Theale as well as the Abbey church itself. Offering hospitality to guests attending courses or conferences at Douai is a key charism of the community.
Established in Paris in 1615, the Community of St Edmund the Martyr was founded by six English monks from the monastery of St Laurence at Dieulouard in Lorraine. It later became a centre for Jacobites. By the eighteenth century, the community library numbered 5,000 volumes, attracting visitors including Dr Samuel Johnson.
During the French Revolution, the community incurred difficulties. In 1818, it moved to Douai, then in Flanders and now part of northern France, occupying the building vacated four years earlier by the English monks of St Gregory the Great who established Downside Abbey in Somerset.
After being expelled from Douai in 1903, St Edmund’s community re-settled in Woolhampton, near Reading in Berkshire. The village of Beenham, less than a mile from the current monastery, was said to have been the home place of a monk who joined the original community in Paris.
Brother Aidan signs his profession document
Douai Abbey
