Abbot to celebrate 100th birthday Saturday

Friends, colleagues and former students are invited to help Marmion Abbey Abbot Emeritus Gerard Benkert OSB celebrate his 100th birthday Saturday.

He will receive visitors from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the abbey, 1000 Butterfield Road, Aurora.

Benkert is the oldest living abbot in the United States, and the oldest monk of the Swiss-American Benedictine congregation. He was made the founding abbot of Marmion Abbey when it was made an independent abbey in 1947.

He served for 23 years as abbot and as president of Marmion Military Academy (now Marmion Academy), the boys high school run by the abbey.

Benkert oversaw the abbey's move from sites in downtown Aurora to farmland on Butterfield in the 1950s, and construction of the current school campus in 1959.

After retiring as abbot in 1969, he went to work as a teacher at the abbey's mission priory and school in Guatemala. After serving there more than 30 years, he retired to the abbey.

He retired, for the second time, to the abbey.

In addition to the open house, the abbey is publishing Benkert's "Memoirs." It can be bought at the open house or through Marmion's Hammes Bookstore after Nov. 1 at marmion.org.