A frail figure advanced slowly among the faithful in her ivory gown covered with a black scapular. “Brother Benjamin, this way!” » The dean of Bellefontaine Abbey – 101 years old – is a phenomenon. This Thursday, November 13th, hundreds of faithful came to the abbey to enjoy a farewell snack to the Cistercian monks, who had been present at Bellefontaine for two hundred and nine years.
Everyone wanted to greet the oldest among them, shaking his wasted hand to express their affection. He had lived here for seventy-four years and thought he would end his life there. But the former steward, like 12 of his classmates, had to clear the way.
The order came from Rome. The abbot general of the Cistercian order of obedience (commonly called the Trappists), Dom Bernardus Peeters, had decided. In spring 2026, 12 delegates from the community of Barroux, in Vaucluse, will take over the site. Officially, the job crisis and the difficulty for these parents to maintain a vast real estate complex and 120 hectares of land justified this radical choice. Unofficially, the Trappist withdrawal was allegedly accelerated for financial reasons after the community became victims of fraud.
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