The Benedictine community at Ampleforth has elected Dom Robert Igo as its new Abbot, the first time the monastic community has had a serving abbot since Cuthbert Madden stepped aside in 2016 over allegations of misconduct.
In the intervening years the community has been overseen by Ampleforth’s Prior Administrator and Acting Religious Superior, Fr Gabriel Everitt OSB.
Fr Madden’s term of office expired this month.
Fr Robert was elected this morning, in the presence of Abbot Paul Stonham OSB, delegate of the president of the English Benedictine Congregation, the Right Rev Christopher Jamison OSB.
The blessing of the new abbot will take place at a special ceremony presided over by Bishop of Middlesbrough Terence Drainey, on a date to be arranged.
Fr Robert, a former Anglican priest, was born and grew up Manchester, where he worked as a student nurse in the 1970s.
He was received into the Catholic Church in 1987 and joined Ampleforth in 1988.
He was ordained a priest in 1993, and traveled to Zimbabwe to serve at the monastic foundation established there by the Ampleforth Community, the Monastery of Christ the Word in Macheke.
Since 2005 he has been Prior at the Monastery of Christ the Word.
Dom Rogert writes movingly about his vocation in an article published on the Ampleforth website.
“The sense of vocation intensified when I discovered the presence of religious life within the Anglican Communion. Thanks to one of the Anglican priests I got to know, and attended retreats at the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfied in West Yorkshire. A whole new world was opened up and I discovered the beauty of the daily round of prayer lived in community and with it the deepening importance of a solid life of prayer. This was strengthened by my contact with the Sisters of the Love of God, an Anglican contemplative community in Oxford. These sisters taught me much, especially Sr. Benedicta Ward SLG who was for many years a spiritual guide and friend.”
He also explains his decision to become a Catholic: “What led to Ampleforth and entry into the Catholic Church? In reality nothing went wrong, things simply came together. It was precipitated by the then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, who did not seem to believe in much, except his own unorthodox opinions.”
His appointment as Abbot marks the beginning of a new chapter for Ampleforth, which has been beleaguered by a legacy of historic abuse.
Fr Cuthbert Madden, who stepped aside in 2016, subsequently began a civil action to be reinstated after not being allowed to resume his duties and issued legal proceedings against the Abbot President Christopher Jamison and three others, including the Catholic Trust of England and Wales.
That civil action was struck out in the High Court in January 2020, following a two-day hearing.
A long-running Holy See investigation, which included a 2018 visitation by the Abbot General of the Sylvestrine Congregation, Michael Kelly, an Australian based in Rome, and the Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, Brendan Coffey, from Ireland, concluded last year that he should not return to the community, although it noted that Fr Madden has not committed any canonical delict nor been convicted of any civil crime.
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