Monastery

CUMBERLAND -- Preservationists and others are mobilizing to save a medieval-looking, vacant and decaying monastery that traces its beginnings to St. John Neumann, the first American male saint canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.Leaders of the Catholic parish of Saints Peter and Paul want to tear down a section of the dark-stone monastery and its fortress-like Gothic chapel so a parking lot can take its place.The monastery, built in 1850 and enlarged afterward, has been vacant since the mid-1980s.

The Baltimore City Council and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake have enacted a zoning ordinance that will allow a former Catholic school in Southwest Baltimore to be converted into a convalescent home for homeless people. Project PLASE (People Lacking Ample Shelter and Employment), a 30-year-old nonprofit based in Charles North, has offered more than $1 million for the former St. Joseph's Monastery school buildings in the 3500 block of Old Frederick Road. The school was closed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 2010.

CUMBERLAND -- Preservationists are proposing that a vacant 19th-century monastery -- scheduled to be demolished -- be renovated as a bed-and-breakfast inn and conference center and as a shrine to St. John Neumann, the first American male saint.Although the Preservation Society of Allegany County Inc. has presented its "vision" for the monastery to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which owns the medieval-looking structure, church officials are pursuing plans to raze the building.A hearing on the demolition request is scheduled today before the city's Historic Preservation Commission.

This coming week offers a chance to visit two worthy Maryland landmarks. The normally off-limits Gibson Island Club will be open, and you can enjoy a lunch overlooking the Magothy. And I paid an advance visit to the Shrine of St. Anthony at Folly Quarter, a remarkable Roman Catholic monastery complex in western Howard County. Being a fan of pre-World War II buildings and architecture, I opted for a preview of the 1931 monastery, which is open daily for Masses, confessions and other functions.

Because of an editing error, some editions yesterday incorrectly identified John Neumann as the first American saint. He was the first American male saint. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first native-born American saint.The Sun regrets the error.Cardinal William H. Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore, has approved plans to tear down a pre-Civil War monastery in Cumberland, despite efforts by preservationists to save it.The Catholic parish of SS. Peter and Paul informed members Sunday of the cardinal's decision.

CUZCO, Peru -- Five centuries after seeing their holiest temples demolished and rebuilt as Catholic churches, the Incas are fighting back.When the Spanish destroyed Incan civilization in the 16th century, they asserted their presence by building on sites worshiped by the Incas. In this wind-swept town, for example, Franciscan monks built the monastery of Santo Domingo on top of Koricancha, or Temple of the Sun, the holiest shrine in an empire that stretched from Colombia to Argentina.But now, the survivors of that Andean culture and their allies are trying to unearth Koricancha -- much to the concern of the church that rests precariously on top.The fight is being closely watched throughout Latin America, as native Americans in this former Inca capital fight to reclaim their buried cultural heritage -- even if it threatens the European culture grafted on top.Symbolic of the changing times is that the Incas have found allies in government and business.

CUMBERLAND -- For more than a century, the austere brick building overlooking Cumberland served as a quiet bastion of religious contemplation and worship -- a self-sufficient world of brown-robed men.The Capuchin friars and their gardens, orchards and vineyards have long disappeared from the hillside, known as Holy Hill. And so has any semblance of the peace the mid-19th-century monastery once offered the parishioners of the adjoining Saints Peter and Paul Church.The 22,000-square-foot building, abandoned in 1986 and decaying, is at the center of an emotional battle between preservationists and Roman Catholic officials, who want to raze it for a church addition and parking lot."

Sister Celine Arnold, a Carmelite nun for 76 years and prioress -- the mother superior -- at her order's monastery on Dulaney Valley Road in Towson during an era of reforms in the Roman Catholic Church resulting from the Vatican II council, died of respiratory and heart failure there Thursday. She was 98. Born Helen Agnes Arnold in Taneytown, Sister Celine entered the cloistered community in Baltimore in 1926 after graduating from Trinity College in Washington with a chemistry degree. She took her final vows in 1931.

From a hillside perch fronting the Ramakrishna Monastery, Wil Devine, a jeans-clad monk, pointed east toward a long, verdant foothill and ridgeline. "I feel God here," he said. "I feel a peace. And people who have no inclination toward religion feel it here, too." But peace in this semirural corner of Orange County, at the doorstep of the Cleveland National Forest, is threatened, Devine and the monastery's other monks said. In December, over the unanimous objections of a county-appointed advisory board and despite several lawsuits, the county supervisors approved a 283-home, 600-acre development called Saddleback Meadows on the geologically unstable foothill.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- They have names like Trappist, Sudden Death, Forbidden Fruit and Lamb of God. Some date back to the Middle Ages, while others come in champagne bottles, reflecting their undoubted nobility. They are the astounding 430 Belgian beers, the quality of which have made this country -- not much bigger than Maryland -- a brewing super power.As the ubiquitous jugs of frothy beer attest in the earthy portraits of Flemish peasant life by Rubens, Breughel and Brouwer, the brew has long been part of Belgian life itself.

Brigades of parishioners at St. Joseph's Monastery in Southwest Baltimore have cataloged their roles in the mission on a spreadsheet. Each team is tasked with convincing different neighbors that the only offer for the congregation's empty school building — from a group that helps homeless people get back onto their feet — will benefit the community at large. "We're trying to do away with any misperceptions and lack of knowledge," said Mary Slicher, executive director of Project PLASE (People Lacking Ample Shelter and Employment)

Anne Frank had her diary, which did not come to light until years after her death in a Nazi concentration camp. Ko Htike has his blog, where he posted the following comment about his native Myanmar on Sept. 30, and it became available to the world moments later: "We just got phone call with our sister living in Yangon about a few hours ago. We saw on BBC world, saying that 200 monks were arrested. The true picture is far worse!!!!!!!!! For one instance, the monastery at an obscure neighborhood of Yangon, called Ngwe Kyar Yan (on Wei-za-yan-tar Road, Yangon)

Colonial Players' season opener, Michael Hollinger's Incorruptible, irreverently looks at the practices inside a 13th-century French monastery, positing that ends can justify the means under desperate conditions while laughing at naive beliefs in the miraculous powers of relics. At Sunday's matinee performance, some of us in the predominantly senior audience were amused at how much we flawed folk today have in common with the monks who promised bigger miracles than their competitors. Today we are promised miraculous restorations of youth in cosmetic and drug ads, and for contemporary hypocrisy unmasked we need look no further than last week's headlines.

Colonial Players opens its 59th season Aug. 31 with Michael Hollinger's Incorruptible, an irreverent, politically incorrect farce set in a French monastery during the Dark Ages. If the badinage heard before a scheduled rehearsal at Colonial Players' theater at 108 East St. in Annapolis is any indication of how funny this cast and crew can be, we're in for a comic treat. Sunday's mood was decidedly playful with barbs flying at a fast TV-sitcom pace. Dressed in his brown monk's robe, Jamie Hanna became the good-natured target of such lines as: "Why do I want to sip Frangelico when I look at you?"

Sister Marguerite Therese Leary, the former mother superior of the Frederick Monastery and past president of Visitation Academy there, died Sunday of complications from old age at her order's monastery in Rockville, Va. She was 92. Born Margaret Mary Leary in Philadelphia and raised on Springfield Avenue in North Baltimore, she attended the old Baltimore Academy of the Visitation on Park Avenue in downtown Baltimore and graduated from the Frederick Academy...

Irene Forbes Perkins has already accomplished a lot during her life. The registered nurse was the chief executive of a home health care company in Florida. She led a healing ministry and served as senior warden of her Episcopal parish. But yesterday, she took the final step toward a new life of contemplative prayer as Sister Teresa Irene of the Heart of God, the founder and coordinator of the first Carmelite order in the worldwide Anglican community. At a ceremony at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in North Baltimore, the nun dedicated her life to God and to the Episcopal Carmel of St. Teresa, a monastery she has started in Rising Sun with the guidance of Roman Catholic Carmelites.

MOUNT SINAI, Egypt -- Saying he felt "great joy and deep emotion," Pope John Paul II prayed yesterday at the spot where tradition says Moses once stood, and called himself a pilgrim "in the footsteps of God." The trip was a personal triumph for the 79-year-old pope, who had long dreamed of visiting the Holy Lands. But it was shadowed by disappointment. The pope, who spoke at St. Catherine's, the monastery at the foothills of Mount Sinai that is one of the most revered sites in the Greek Orthodox Church, had once hoped to gather there Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders to symbolize religious reconciliation in the new millennium.

DECANI, Kosovo - The sky is clear and starry above Decani monastery as bearded men in black robes hurry across the yard and through the wooden side door of the Church of the Ascension. Standing in the dark they begin to pray, briskly and without pause, their voices at times rising into song and filling the church with rich harmonies. Around them, barely visible in the dim glow of oil lamps, saints and warriors of the Orthodox Church look down from frescoes painted nearly 700 years ago. These Serbian monks belong to a line that goes back to the 14th century, when King Stefan Uros founded a monastery in a cleft of the Accursed Mountains in southern Kosovo.

On June 10, 2006, BROTHER DAVID NASH, O. SS.T.; loving brother of Mary Jo Holl, Paul Nash, Dorothy Holmes, Antionette Feroah, Thomas Nash and the late W. Michael Nash; devoted son of Victoria C. Nash and the late William M. and Frances Nash. Also survived by several loving nieces and nephews. The Trinitarians will receive guests on Sunday, from 7 to 9 P.M., with a vigil at 8 P.M. in the chapel of the Holy Trinity Monastery, 8400 Park Heights Avenue, Pikesville (For directions, call 410-486-5171)

On Sunday, May 7, 2006, Mr. RICHARD PAUL CAMPBELL, passed away at home. Loving husband of Deborah (nee Helwig) devoted father to Nicholas Francis Campbell and Ashley Marie Campbell, cherished son of Mary Audrey Campbell and the late Charles Francis Campbell, adored brother to Charles C. Campbell and Peggy Pittius and beloved son-in-law to Harry N. Helwig and Patricia A. Helwig and also survived by many other relatives and friends. Visitation for family and friends will be held on Tuesday, May 9, 2006, at HUBBARD FUNERAL HOME, INC., 4107 Wilkens Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 12:30 P.M., in St. Joseph's Monastery, Old Frederick Road and Monastery Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland.