Lebbe to Martin - meeting with Bishop Shanahan

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Pax 15 / 3 / 36 Dear Miss Martin How attentive is the Loving Providence ! Overcrowd train compartment is a bad fitted place to rebexion, and I landed last night at Boher without any definite idea about the talks we had with Bishop Shanahan and Mgr Bearzotti. But, on arriving, I found that my letter of Friday was probably still in way, for nobody...say no trap was there - and I had a lovely walk in the calm, mild night, under a milky sky, which gave light enough to find the way, and kept altogether the dear recollection of the resting nature. I had so an hour and a half to pray and think, and the conclusion is that the idea of Mgr Bearzotti is perhaps the best. Some ten years ago, as I suppose Fr Gerard told you, a congregation of Benedictine Oblates was founded at Maredsous, for the purpose of ensuring a religious staff to the both Schools (Secondary, and Artcrafts). We met opposition in Rome, who refused to authorize a new confergation, and imposed to our Sister obligation to join an old one; they went first to make novitate with the Oblates of Heverle (suburb of Louvain); after some years, a new foundation was made by Heverle in Maredsous, and they sent a Superioress of theirs, and also a Mistress of novices, and our Sisters made henceforth their novitate in Maredsous, under the authority, of course of those two, but the actual direction was totally in the hands of the Fr Director. And, last year, the new foundation has already a good number of perpetual professes, was separated from Heverle, and erected as a special congregation, under His Grace the Bishop of Namur. I am sure we could go on similar lines, and without the same difficulties, as the Holy See invites the existant Orders - say S. Benedict's - to form special separated branches for the new Medical work in Missions. So, I would send an address of thanksgiving, as I told you, but, by the hands of Dom Pierre Bastien - a renown Canonist, and our Procurator in Rome; the address would mention that some Irish Girls, longing for sometimes for such work, and preparing themselves besing in the spirit of S. Benedict, and under guidance of his sons, ask for the Blessing of the Holy Father, and are ready to follow the libes traced in the recent Act of the S.C.de Propaganda Fide. In the same time, I shall write to Maredsous, and ask for a complete exposition of what was done to obtain approval - and altogether, for kind communication of the Rules - we use to call them Constitutions, because the Rule is that of S. Benedict, adapted by the foresaid Constitutions. I shall write also to an American Abbot, my old friend, and ask him for every particulars about the so numerous Houses of Benedictine Nuns, who live a very busy life in Schools and Colleges, Academies of Art and Hospital over the whole of United States. Their Constitutions would be a great help on resolving many problems, as by instance the question of Divine Office. For the Constitutions of America and Maredsous, I write immediately: for…