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Tuesday, October 11, 2005An American who trained as a surgeon in France before World War II, Mother Benedict helped found the abbey in 1947. Situated on 400 acres, it is home to a contemplative community of 37 women who farm, run a dairy and practice traditional crafts like weaving, bookbinding and ironworking. ...When she was 3, she and her brother moved with their mother to France. In 1936, she earned a medical degree from the University of Paris. That year, she entered Notre Dame de Jouarre, a Benedictine abbey outside Paris, taking the name Sister Benedict. During the war, she quietly continued her work as a community doctor. With Nazi officers occupying the abbey, she spent days living in near seclusion in its bell tower to escape their notice. She had her troubles in the cloister, too, though: The Rev. Mother Benedict Duss, who in the late 1940's helped found the first monastery for cloistered Benedictine nuns in the United States but stepped down as its abbess in 1995 amid a Vatican investigation into charges that it was being run in an authoritarian, cultlike manner, died Oct. 2 at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn. She was 94. Authoritarian? What do you expect from a doctor? posted by Sydney on 10/11/2005 08:44:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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