Korean monks reinvigorate U.S. monastery whose numbers have dwindled

Published: 2004-04-21

NEWTON, N.J. (CNS) -- For a New Jersey Benedictine community, what goes around comes around the world. In December 2001, a group of Benedictine monks from Seoul, South Korea, arrived in Newton to reinvigorate St. Paul's Abbey, which had seen its numbers dwindle to three over the years. But the Korean monks and the New Jersey monks had something in common long before 2001 -- a Benedictine abbey in Germany. In 1909, monks from the St. Ottilien Archabbey in the German state of Bavaria traveled to Korea to establish a community. Fifteen years later St. Ottilien monks arrived in Newton to start another community. For many years the abbey had a seminary where American candidates were trained for mission work in Africa and Asia. The current prior, or superior, of the New Jersey abbey is one of the Korean Benedictines, Father Bosco Kim, a member of his order since 1961 and a priest since 1971. He led the first monks to arrive in New Jersey from the Waegwan Abbey in South Korea.

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