By Rita McInerney, Staff Writer

CONYERS--Father Paul Bourne, OCSO, was buried in the earth at the monastery of the Holy Spirit on July 13, A monk there since 1947, he was also among the leading bonsai masters in the United States. He was 87.

Dom Bernard Johnson, the abbot, presided at the funeral Mass and gave the homily based on St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy, in particular the line, “I know in whom I have believed.” He talked about Father Paul’s personal relationship with Jesus and the peace he seemed to experience in the last year of his life.

All of the priest monks at the monastery concelebrated the liturgy, along with Father John Walsh, pastor, and Father Paul Williams, parochial vicar, at St. Pius X Parish in Conyers, and Msgr. Louis Naughton, judicial vicar of the archdiocese.

About 100 friends, mainly from the Atlanta Bonsai Society, were present for the Mass.

After the Mass, monks carried his body, wrapped in a white shroud, to the cemetery directly behind the monastery church. The grave was blessed with prayers said by the abbot and sprinkled with holy water and incense. After Father Paul’s body was lowered slowly into the grave, monks ceremonially dropped shovelsful of dirt over it.

Father Paul’s body was received by the community at the church door the afternoon of July 12. Resting on an open bier, it was carried into the church and positioned in the center aisle between the choir stalls. In Father Paul’s hands was a piece of parchment upon which he had handwritten in Latin his monastic profession.

The vespers service which followed was marked with psalms and hymns, appropriate for a funeral. Father Paul’s body remained in the church through the night with monks taking turns in pairs keeping watch.

Father Paul died in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta on July 10. He fell in his room July 1 and suffered a blow to his head. He didn’t mention it to his fellow monks until that evening, according to Father Francis Michael, a bonsai “disciple” of Father Paul’s. The next morning he was found unconscious on the floor of his room and was taken to Rockdale Hospital.

From there he was transported to St. Joseph’s where he underwent lengthy surgery for a large blood clot on his brain. Later, he required a second operation.

Father Paul did not regain consciousness after the operations. He was never alone; his brother monks spend eight-hour vigils at his bedside.

Father Francis Michael said the monks held a community meeting the Friday night after Father Paul’s funeral. The talk was largely sharing recollections and reflecting on him. The former abbot Dom Augustine, told the other men that a few months before he died, Father Paul had confided that he felt he “was living in God’s presence.”

Father Francis Michael was assigned to work with Father Paul in the greenhouse and plant shop in 1975, a year after he entered the monastery. He termed himself “probably closer to a disciple than a student” of the bonsai expert. “It was mostly sitting with him and observing. He would give me trees to work on and when I couldn’t figure out what to do, he would tell me.”

He said his mentor was always fearful that the younger priest was going to “be pulled” from the shop into another area.

“After awhile he realized I had gotten the bonsai ‘bug’.” When Father Francis Michael took charge of the shop and greenhouse it freed Father Paul “to make bonsai trees and not have to worry” about details.

Many experts came to the monastery to see the collection developed and nurtured by Father Paul and some of the pieces were exhibited in New York. “His skills were well recognized in the bonsia world,” Father Francis Michael said.

A native of Seattle, Father Paul was the son of wealthy and prominent parents. His father was a doctor who expected him to follow the medical profession. When his son became a Paulist priest he disowned him. Earlier, he had studied at Yale University, receiving a master’s degree in art and architecture.

After serving in parishes on the West Coast, Father Paul joined the Trappist community in Conyers in 1947. He served as pastor to the Catholic community in Rockdale County before the parish of St. Pius X was established.

He started the monastery greenhouse in the early 1960s and began a devoted practice of the bonsai art, the cultivation of trees into miniatures or large plant size by pruning branches and roots and then repotting in handsome low pots. A bonsai is sometimes called “tree in a container.” In 1995, the Atlanta Bonsai Society dedicated its annual spring show to him.