Death of a confrere

Father Roland Carbone, O.S.B., died last Friday, March 6. Father Roland had spent many year of his monastic life and priesthood out in parishes. However, he had returned to the Abbey about a year ago and took up residence in the infirmary. He was suffering from a very serious heart condition and the doctors did not think he would live for more than a month or two after he came home. However, he lived almost a year after returning to the infirmary. As is our custom here at the Abbey, monks took turns staying with him the last couple days of his life as it became evident he was in the process of dying. I stayed with him all of Thursday night. He died peacefully on Friday morning about 11:20 AM. He had been under the care of hospice and a couple of the hospice nurses were here with him when he died as well as one of our own nurses on the infirmary staff. He was almost 82 years old.

Father Roland
The bottom two pictures up above are of pottery
work done by Father Roland. They were placed
around the altar for his funeral.

Father Roland's wake service will be tonight (Monday) and his funeral and burial will be tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11:00 AM.

We had some major electrical problems on part of the campus on Friday evening. There was a short in the wiring or the cable at one of the transformers outside the Printery House. Electricity jumped over to another old cable and eventually went to the building. Fortunately there was no major fire and no one was in the building when this happened. It was in the evening after all the workers had gone home. Some leaves did catch fire outside the building, but the C.M.C. Brothers who live in a building just next door, saw the fire and took a fire extinguisher and put it out. An electric company from St. Joseph worked all day Saturday and again all day on Sunday to correct the problem. During that time neither the Printery House or St. Scholastica Hall (where the C.M.C. Brothers live) had any heat or electricity. They finished the repair work about 9:00 PM Sunday evening.

Last weekend the Seminary Board of Regents met here. They began their meetings on Friday afternoon and concluded by noon on Saturday.

I hope the Lenten season is going well for you. Let us continue to pray for one another.