A 70-year-old story!
The nuns of the Monastery of Sant Benet de Montserrat are celebrating the 70th anniversary of our foundation this year.
On 13 May 1952, two Benedictine communities merged to form a new community: Sant Benet de Montserrat. On that day, the nuns from the Monastery of Sant Anton i Santa Clara, founded in the 13th century in Barcelona, and the nuns from the Monastery of Sant Benet de Mataró, whose origins date back to the 19th century, met at the Monastery of Santa Cecília. Both communities had lost their monasteries during the Spanish Civil War and accepted the proposal to merge and settle on the mountain of Montserrat.
The merger took place on 13 May. The nuns of the two communities met at three o'clock in the afternoon in the entrance hall of the Monastery of Santa Cecília, the monastery where the nuns of Mataró had been provisionally installed for some years. There, many nuns met for the first time and gave each other a first emblematic embrace. An hour later, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Father Gabriel Maria Brasó, Prior of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, came and read aloud the Decree of Foundation to the whole community. From that moment on, the Benedictine community of Sant Benet de Montserrat was constituted.
To celebrate the event, on the same date of 13 May, but 70 years later, the community will once again go up to the Monastery of Santa Cecília to celebrate a Eucharist in thanksgiving for 70 years of history. The abbots, abbesses, priors and prioresses of the Catalan monasteries have been invited, as well as the president and the first councillor of the European Benedictine Congregation of the Resurrection, to which the monastery of Sant Benet de Montserrat belongs. After mass, there will be a picnic where the brother monks of Santa Maria de Montserrat will also join in.
In the community there are still three nuns who lived that event in first person, they are Gna. Assumpta Bardolet, Gna. Maria Mercè Coll and Gna. Maria Tecla Carricondo. With all of them we shared the joy of the feast, making our way in community. Let us give thanks to God!