The monastic community is a witness to God’s abiding love and concern to the people of Ealing and beyond.
St Benedict’s is a Benedictine community in the English Benedictine Congregation, founded as a parish in 1897 from St Gregory’s Abbey at Downside, Somerset, at the invitation of Cardinal Vaughan, then Archbishop of Westminster. It was canonically erected as a dependent Priory in 1916, with Dom Wulstan Pearson as its first Prior. In 1947 it became an independent Conventual Priory, and in 1955 it was and granted the title of “Abbey” by Pope Pius XII with Dom Charles Pontifex as its first Abbot. Thus, Ealing Abbey became the first Benedictine abbey in Greater London since the Reformation.
© James Leachman, O.S.B., copyright 23 August 2012