Fr. Benedict La Rocque (1916-2004)

Father Benedict La Rocque passed away November 19, 2004.

Tancred La Rocque came to Atchison from Cawker City in Northcentral Kansas for high school and college.  He entered the Abbey and pronounced first vows July 1937.  After some nine years as a member of the community that included ordination and teaching at Maur Hill he was given permission to transfer to the newly founded Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Ga.  This monastery was a foundation from Gethsemani, Ky.  Father Benedict brought building skills to Conyers and so he helped build a new monastery and later an abbey church there.  He even developed a special paint just for concrete that was later patented.  At one point in the construction he stepped off a scaffold to check on his work and fell several feet prevented from death only by landing on another level of scaffold.

Father Benedict wanted to be engaged as a priest in pastoral work and so he sought for and was granted incardination in the Archdiocese of Omaha where he served for 21 years as pastor of several churches.  He made friends with both people and his fellow priests in the Cornhusker state, but feeling the tug in his heart for his original community, he sought permission to re-enter St. Benedict’s Abbey in 1989, where he made his third novitiate.

Father Benedict was a large man and possessed more than normal strength.  He could carry large floor scrubbers, one in each hand, up and down stairs.  He often scrubbed and waxed the floors of the entire abbey church at Christmas and Easter time.  Father Benedict was a holy and cheerful man and was the confessor and spiritual director to many in the community.  Many visitors who came to the Abbey were delighted by his flower gardens that graced the Abbey grounds in the spring and summer months.  He planned said gardens so that something was always in bloom with the changing seasons and also the changing hours of the day.