The community of St Benedict in Ealing is a witness to God’s abiding love and concern to the people of Ealing and beyond. Following the life of the early church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles 2:42, they are “united in the breaking of bread, the prayers and the teaching of the apostle”.
It is a Benedictine community in the English Benedictine Congregation, founded as a parish in 1897 from St Gregory’s Abbey at Downside, Somerset, at the invitation of Cardinal Vaughan, then Archbishop of Westminster. The photograph to the right is of the community in 1904.
The community was canonically erected as a dependent Priory in 1916, with Dom Wulstan Pearson as its first Prior. In 1947 it became an independent Conventual Priory, and in 1955 it was and granted the title of “Abbey” by Pope Pius XII with Dom Charles Pontifex as its first Abbot. Thus, Ealing Abbey became the first Benedictine abbey in Greater London since the Reformation.
In the following fifty years the monastic community has invested considerable time, money, prayers and energy in the parish and in the schools, and in 2011 the monastic community began to imagine ways of developing its mission in traditional yet practical ways. During 2012 Abbot Martin Shipperlee established a process of consultation aimed at producing a longer term strategy to further develop ideas for the monastic community’s life and mission and the facilities that would be needed to support them in the coming years. In 2019 Abbot Martin reigned and on 9 July 2019 the community elected Dom Dominic Taylor as 6th abbot of Ealing
The monastic community is united in following the Gospels, the Rule of St Benedict and the Constitutions of the English Benedictine Congregation as approved by the Holy See.
© Ealing Abbey, copyright 10 July 2019
