On Aug. 1, Benedictine monks moved into the emblematic Solignac Abbey in west-central France after a 230-year absence.
It is the first time since the French Revolution that the Benedictines have returned to this historic Christian site, established by St. Eligius in the 7th century.
This event, regarded as providential by local Catholics, does indeed have a symbolic significance, especially at a time when many religious buildings in France are left to decay, condemned to disappear or be bought for secular purposes.
The monks’ return was recently announced by the Diocese of Limoges in a press release co-signed by local Bishop Pierre-Antoine Bozo and Dom Jean-Bernard Marie Bories, abbot of St. Joseph de Clairval Abbey in France’s Burgundy region, who has bought the abbey to establish a priory. The monks of Clairval approved the foundation project by a two-thirds majority.
After anti-clerical revolutionaries expelled the Benedictines in 1790, the abbey was used successively as a prison, a boarding school for girls, and a porcelain factory, until 1930.
It was a refuge for Catholic teachers during World War II, before welcoming the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate from 1945. The community stayed until the 1990s, finally transferring the property to the diocese in 2011. The abbey had remained unoccupied for the past 17 years.
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