By: By Jennifer Willems

PERU — St. Bede Abbey has a new spiritual leader.

Abbot Philip Davey, OSB, was elected the eighth abbot of the monastery on June 7. He succeeds Abbot Claude Peifer, OSB, who completed his eight-year term on June 6.

Overseeing the election process was Abbot Hugh Anderson, OSB, president of the American-Cassinese Congregation of Benedictines.

Abbot Philip became the abbey’s canonical leader as soon as he accepted the election and took an oath of fidelity to the creed and to the church. As a sign of his new role, a large pectoral cross was placed around his neck.

“I was struck by the sign of authority being putting on the cross, the cross of Christ, and then ministering to and with his people,” Abbot Philip told The Catholic Post.

“Fortunately we believe the cross is the way to salvation. Most of the time we accept it joyfully,” he said. “I have worn crosses and medals before, but putting on that cross and accepting this position was very strong and real.”

Details for an official installation ceremony with Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, were still being worked out at press time. Abbot Philip anticipates that it will take place later this summer.

He explained that those who are elected before they are 67 may serve until age 75. For the new abbot, that is 11 years.

He said he is still getting used to “the new reality that I have.”

“Being the spiritual leader of a monastery is a significant shift,” said Abbot Philip, who has been head of mission advancement at St. Bede Academy since 2007. He also has had a private counseling practice since 1995. “Trying to determine what this means in terms of the many other things I do is complicated at this point.”

GROWING UP TOGETHER
While the specifics will sort themselves out in time, he said some of the larger issues that St. Bede must address in the coming years are issues most religious communities are facing. That includes having members with a higher average age and fewer of them, which has implications for the community’s financial picture.

“We are also integrating younger people who are coming to community and they’re coming from a vastly different culture than most of us came from,” Abbot Philip explained. “We’re a community where the oldest person is about 90 and the youngest one is 24. You’ve got this wide spectrum of people who have grown up in very different eras.

“Because this is a monastery, where you make a lifetime commitment . . . you grow up together,” he said. “That means creating a common identity and making every member feel they are a significant contributing member of the community.”

Add to that dealing with issues of religion and spiritually, he said.

There are challenges in all of this, but Abbot Philip said that being part of a stable community is what drew him to St. Bede and the Benedictine way of life in the first place.

“I had grown up in a diocesan parish and I saw the life that priests lived.
In those days many of the parishes had two priests,” he said. “I liked the idea of living with a large group of men who had a common vision and serving the church.”

OGLESBY NATIVE
The son of Donald and Louise Davey, Abbot Philip was born in LaSalle on April 3, 1947, and raised in Holy Family Parish in Oglesby. He attended St. Bede Academy and Junior College and entered the Benedictine community there in 1967.

He was professed on Aug. 15, 1968, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire in 1970 and a degree in theology from San Anselmo in Rome in 1974. Abbot Philip was ordained on May 3, 1975, in St. Bede Abbey Church by Bishop Edward W. O’Rourke.

He taught religion at St. Bede Academy and was the spiritual director of the Peterstown TEC Center from its inception in 1976 until 1980. Over the years he also served as junior master, novice master and prior at St. Bede Abbey.

In 1997 Abbot Philip was appointed superintendent of St. Bede Academy and ministered as a pastoral counselor to the academy students and faculty. He began his development work at the school 10 years later.

“The exciting thing is the discovery of how we come to know and understand God more fully and how our relationship with God grows, just as it does in any other relationship,” he told The Post. “The real joy is experiencing that in myself and then seeing it in other people.”

Abbot Philip said it has been an honor to be part of a group of men who are so dedicated to prayer and serving God, and he looks forward to continuing his journey with them in the years ahead.