California community of Norbertine priests establish new priory, institute in Illinois

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 13, 2023 / 06:00 am

A community of Norbertine priests from California is putting down roots in the Midwest by opening a new priory and educational institute in Springfield, Illinois, this summer.

Father Augustine Puchner, OPraem, the community’s new prior, told CNA that the new priory and institute represent the fruition of an almost 20-year vision for the growing Norbertine community. Puchner lives at the new priory in Springfield with six other Norbertine priests from St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California.

Located in a building complex on Springfield’s northeast side, which has been standing nearly a century, the new priory is technically still “dependent” on the main abbey in California, but the goal is for the priory to grow and gain its independence in the coming years, Puchner said.

The new priory had its official opening July 1. The Norbertines plan to offer daily Mass and thrice-weekly confessions in the new space, located at 4867 Laverna Rd., as well as host diocesan events and retreats for groups and individuals. The buildings and grounds of Corpus Christi Priory are the former site of the Chiara Center, operated by the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, who will continue to live in a convent on the property. The Norbertine fathers will serve as chaplains for the sisters, Puchner said.

The Norbertine, or Premonstratensian, order was founded in 1121 in France by St. Norbert. The priests of St. Michael’s Abbey are “canons regular,” which means they are priests who live in community and do not have any one particular ministry but rather adapt their ministry to the needs of the community.

“The motto that St. Norbert himself chose 900 years ago was ‘Prepared for every good work.’ Of course, it’s from St. Paul, but that’s the motto,” Puchner explained.

“So we were not founded as an order for any particular ministry. We’re not a teaching order, we’re not a health care order, we’re not a missionary order. We serve the local Church in whatever way the bishop asks of us, or whatever way the Church needs.”

The community at St. Michael’s Abbey dates to 1950, when seven priests fled communist Hungary. In 1957, Cardinal James McIntyre of Los Angeles invited them to California, and the community started in 1961. Their lives there are organized around the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Norbertine priests work in parishes, teach in schools, and serve as chaplains to colleges and communities of women religious. They also minister and teach religious education in prisons, youth facilities, hospitals, and nursing homes, as well as hosting retreats, Bible studies, and a summer camp run by seminarians.

In 2021, St. Michael’s Abbey finished construction on a new abbey in eastern Orange County, after a $120 million fundraising campaign. Puchner said the abbey has been blessed with steady growth since about the mid-1980s and has outgrown even their new space. Offers from bishops across the country began to pour in, inviting the Norbertines to start new priories in their dioceses. Puchner said that the local bishop of Orange, Kevin Vann, is a priest originally of the Diocese of Springfield, and his insights about the diocese helped to tip the scales in favor of locating the new priory there.

It was in the spring of 2022 when Puchner says the St. Michael’s abbott approached him and asked him to serve as prior of the new community. Puchner says he was content where he was, having ministered in a local Orange County parish for over a decade but was nevertheless excited to take on a new challenge, especially since the move represented a homecoming of sorts for the former Midwesterner.

The opening of the priory includes another major facet in the form of a center for a new educational initiative run by the Norbertines, which is set to launch Aug. 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of Mary.

The new initiative, The Evermode Institute, seeks to serve Catholic teachers, administrators, and formators by offering a complete curriculum in the fundamentals of the Catholic faith that is “confident in its Catholicism and clear in its approach,” its website proclaims. It’s named for the 12th century St. Evermode, a close collaborator of St. Norbert. Evermode is known for his “great and effective works of evangelization and formation in the Catholic faith,” the Springfield Diocese said. 

Puchner said the institute will constitute a program that combines in-person events and instruction at the priory in Springfield, as well as educational video programming that will be made available far and wide. The videos will feature the priests of the abbey as teachers. 

“The first stage of the Evermode Institute’s development is just sort of basic Catholic doctrine formation for not only the educators but also for administrators. Bishop [Thomas] Paprocki is requiring all of his school principals and directors of religious education to participate in the Evermode Institute program. So we’ll start with just sort of a basic course on Catholic doctrine, but with the view of expanding the ministry, especially the video portion,” Puchner explained. 

The advocacy of Paprocki was instrumental in bringing the new priory to fruition, Puchner noted.

“I really see God’s hand in all of this, the work of the Holy Spirit, and I am very grateful to Almighty God for all these blessings,” Paprocki said, as reported by the diocese. 

“[A]s the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis were trying to discern what to do with their community and with this property, and as the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange were growing and wondering where they could go, where could they expand, and through conversations I had with both of these communities, eventually this came together.”

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Puchner said visitors are welcome at the new priory. 

“We’d like to establish our independence and permanency here in the community in just a few years. And I think that certainly can be accomplished with the resources and the personnel that we already have,” the priest said.