Death of Dom Pauline OSB, last of New Norcia’s Spanish Benedictines, closes a chapter in Western Australia’s Catholic life that began over 150 years ago.
By Peter Rosengren
Editor
A chapter in the life of the Catholic Church in Western Australia came to an end on 18 January when Dom Paulino Gutierrez, the last of New Norcia’s Spanish-born monks, died.
When he passed away at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home in Glendalough, Dom Paulino Gutierrez was almost a century old, having reached the venerable age of 99 years. The Little Sisters had cared for Dom Paulino for the last 12 months of his life and were with him praying beside his bed when he entered eternal life.
Described as the very model of monastic humility by his Abbott, John Herbert OSB, in his homily at the Requiem Mass for the repose of Dom Paulino’s soul, the last quarter of his life had been spent producing olive oil from the monastery’s ancient groves.
It was therefore a touching, even elegiac, moment when those gathered around his grave in the monastery’s cemetery cast not the traditional handfuls of dirt but olive twigs down on to the coffin, leaving Dom Paulino’s mortal remains covered in a soft carpet of gentle green.
The funeral on 22 January at the monastery was attended by an estimated 200 friends, monastics, monastery supporters and church officials as well as Mr Angel Quintella, the Spanish Consul representing Spain’s Ambassador to Australia.
Also present were clergy from the Archdiocese of Perth including Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton and Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton.
“He was a man of simplicity and a perfect model of monastic humility,” Abbott Herbert told The Record.
In his homily, Abbott Herbert turned to the Seventh chapter on humility in The Rule of St Benedict, the rule written by the great founder of most forms of monastic life over the last 1,500 years or so and which governs Benedictine life and monasteries throughout the world today, to illustrate how Dom Paulino had faithfully served his God and his brothers.
Dom Paulino was born in Villaespasa, near Burgos in Spain, and entered the monastery in El Pueyo in 1924; he came to New Norcia in 1928.
Throughout the course of his life Dom Paulino had served variously in the monastery as baker (one press report estimated he had baked more than a million loaves of bread throughout his life), a miller, a cobbler mending the shoes of his brother monks and finally a maker of the well-known monastery olive oil.
The Spanish Chapter in the life of New Norcia that has ended with Dom Paulino’s passing began in 1846 and was to last 154 years.
It opened when Spanish Benedictines Rosendo Salvado and Joseph Serra arrived at the location to establish a mission for the Aborigines of the area; the following year the monastery’s foundation stone was laid, leading to a place and a tradition unique in Australian history and Church life and known across the nation.
For more than a century and a half, Spanish-born Benedictine monks were part of that story and built the tradition that is New Norcia today. Now that chapter has ended.
However, with the beloved Dom Paulino’s passing a new chapter is beginning. Although the New Year has begun with sadness at his loss, Abbott Herbert told The Record, it also begins with hope and joy.
On 1 February three new novices will take their first vows as members of a monastic way of life that originated with St Benedict more than one and a half millennia ago in a place from which Dom Paulino’s beloved New Norcia took its name – the monastic centre of Norcia in Italy.
As each new novice comes forward to make his vows, Dom Paulino, one strongly suspects, would be very happy at that.