By: By Tom Dermody

EL PASO — After sharing community life with the monks of St. Bede Abbey in Peru for five decades, Father Roger Corpus, OSB, admits there were times he struggled with loneliness when he first moved into the rectory at St. Mary’s Parish here a decade ago.

But as a “very good experience” guiding St. Mary’s nears a July 31 conclusion, Father Roger anticipates a reverse period of adjustment when he again takes up residence at St. Bede.

“I’ll have to learn to live in community again,” said Father Roger, who turns 84 on July 14, with a smile.

St. Bede is very familiar territory for Father Roger — who taught at St. Bede Academy for 33 years and led the Benedictine community as abbot from 1990 to 2003.

“I’ve never given up my room there,” he told The Catholic Post, adding that he returned to the abbey almost every week for prayer and a meal with his Benedictine brothers.

PERU NATIVE
In fact, Father Roger is a native of Peru, and was raised in St. Joseph’s Parish. He attended the parish grade school and then St. Bede Academy and junior college.

As he discerned a vocation to the priesthood, he first considered becoming a diocesan priest. But “something about the Benedictines and their life attracted me,” and after a summer working at the parish with his pastor, Father James Lauer, OSB, he felt called to monastic life and St. Bede Abbey in particular because of its teaching apostolate.

He entered the Benedictine community in 1950 and professed vows on July 11, 1951. Two years later, he earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., and then returned to St. Bede for four years of theology studies.

Father Roger was ordained a Benedictine priest by Bishop William Cousins on June 2, 1957.

From 1957 to 1990 he taught English, photography and film making at St. Bede Academy. Along the way he earned a master’s degree in communication arts from the University of Notre Dame, studying over the course of several summers and then bringing what he learned back to the Academy in the form of new courses in the visual arts.

He recalled that the film classes utilized “Super 8” format film, and then “I went into black and white stills when Super 8 went out of style.”

In addition to teaching, Father Roger also served the Academy for periods as infirmarian and prefect of the boarding school. He was prior of St. Bede Abbey — a position Father Roger describes as “an assistant right hand of the abbot” — from 1981 to 1985 and again from 1988 to 1990, the year he was elected as the sixth Abbot of St. Bede. He would be re-elected in 1998.

To meet the responsibilities of leading the community, Abbot Roger deepened his prayer life and increased his spiritual reading — especially the works of Cardinal Basil Hume, which he found very helpful.

“I felt the need for the Holy Spirit more with the decisions that had to be made,” whether they involved St. Bede Academy, normal maintenance of the facility, or “telling men what they will or won’t do” in various assignments.

FIRST PASTORATE
When he resigned as abbot in 2003, he conferred with Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, about future service. He was appointed administrator of St. Mary’s Parish in El Paso that summer, and was named pastor two years later.

“I grew a lot spiritually and in understanding people,” Father Roger said of his decade serving the El Paso faith community.

That service won’t end until after he accompanies St. Mary’s through the celebration of its 150th anniversary in mid-July. Among the plans for that event will be a room dedicated to the parish’s most famous native son, sainthood candidate Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Parishioners will express gratitude and say their farewells to Father Roger on Sunday, July 28, during a buffet dinner at noon at St. Mary’s Hall followed by an open house.

Father Roger said a Benedictine priest doesn’t retire, “he just changes jobs. We go back to where we came from,” he added, referring to community life at the abbey.

Congratulatory notes may be sent to Father Roger at St. Mary’s Parish, 79 W. 3rd St., PO Box 197, El Paso, IL 61378.