12 Mar 2025

News from the Community of St Gregory the Great

Exactly three years after our move to Southgate House, we are glad to announce that we will be taking up residence with the community of St Michael and All Angels at Belmont Abbey, Hereford, in the summer.

In the last week, our two communities have voted to begin a two-year period of living together. During this time St Gregory’s will nonetheless continue to be a separate and independent entity under the provisions of Canon Law. Our shared hope is that we will be able to support and strengthen each other in faithfulness to our Benedictine vocation and that eventually we will form a single, united community at Belmont. We will announce the exact date of our move to Belmont when we have settled the practicalities.

Three years ago, our move to Devon allowed us up to five years in which we could discern the way forward. We are grateful to Abbot David and the Buckfast community for their generosity in giving us the use of their former retreat house for this vital period. Here we have enjoyed the opportunity of leading a simpler and more intense community life, less overwhelmed by the buildings and grounds at Downside that were too big for our current needs.

Our discernment has encouraged us to continue the mission of our monastic forebears, a mission that our patron, Pope St Gregory the Great first entrusted to Benedictine monks at the end of the sixth century under the leadership of St Augustine of Canterbury.

We now have the opportunity of beginning a joint project with the Community of Belmont Abbey. Together we can explore fresh ways of providing the pastoral care and formation that have always marked the English Benedictine Congregation. To make this possible, we ask your prayers that our united communities will attract new Benedictine vocations to serve the needs of the Church today and in the years ahead.

We share involvement in the fresh growth of Benedictine life in Peru, with the monastery in Lurín, and in Chile, where the Manquehue Apostolic Movement has been associated with the English Benedictine Congregation for many years. Such relationships link us with the missionary tradition undertaken by our two communities in Australia and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere in the nineteenth century.

St Gregory’s community remains committed to their current pastoral outreach undertaken by the monks in the United Kingdom and abroad, through their oblates and parish, and to sharing and developing the important heritage that we are still responsible for at Downside Abbey.

Our common hope is that this new project will invigorate our two communities and contribute to the mission of the Church at a time when the witness of monastic life is so essential.

Solemnity of St Gregory the Great (12 March 2025)