Installation news and pictures

NEW ABBOT FOR THE CISTERCIAN ABBEY MBENGWI

On Tuesday the 6^th of August 2007, Dom Charles Arde-Erzoa Amihere was elected as the new Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey Mbengwi. He takes over from Dom Jude Tah Forcham who ended a six year term of office on the same day. The elections were conducted by Dom Joseph Delargy, Abbot of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Leicester England, assisted by Mother Margaret, Abbess emeritus of St Justina's Monastery Abaikiliki in Nigeria.

The Installation of Dom Charles took place on the same day in the Chapter Room of the Monastery.

In installing Dom Charles Dom Joseph congratulated the community for its maturity in electing an African Abbot in place of another African. This he said, was a sign of the progress the monastic life is making in Africa. He also congratulated Dom Jude for what he has done to the Abbey in the past six years. He said the successful election of a new Abbot was the sign of a successful Abbacy of Dom Jude. He finally congratulated Dom Charles for his election and called on the community to give him the necessary support to govern well. The new Abbot then made the profession of faith, pledging to follow the mind of the church in the administration of the Monastery. He was then given a pectoral cross, the keys and seals of the Monastery, to take up command of the affairs of the Monastery. Then he took the Abbatial Chair in Chapter and all the professed monks of the Monastery in order of seniority came up and knelt before him and pledged obedience. The documents of the installation were then signed and the community moved to church where Dom Charles took the Abbatial stall and the Te Deum was sung to praise God for the success of the election. The Abbatial blessing to be done by the Archbishop of Bamenda will be done later.

Dom Charles was born on 17^th April 1950 in Ghana. He did his secondary and high school education in Ghana between 1966-1973 when he proceeded to St Peter's Regional Major Seminary at Pedu, Cape-Coast Ghana where he did philosophy and 2 years of theology. In 1976 he came into contact with monks on a visit to Togo and desired being one himself. Since there were no monasteries in Ghana, he applied and was accepted to join Newark Abbey in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. When he was preparing to travel to the U.S. he met a Ghanaian priest who was starting a monastic project in Ghana. Br Charles joined the new diocesan monastic foundation in 1978. In1979 he was sent to Bamenda for monastic formation to return home to Ghana to help in establishing their own Monastery. In 1981, he made first profession and went back to Ghana in 1984. The monastic project in Ghana was not successful and so in 1988, Br Charles decided to return to Cameroon to join the Cistercian Monastery in Mbengwi. He had to start afresh the monastic journey he began 10 years earlier with another canonical novitiate in September 1988. After the second novitiate, he took his temporary vows in October 1989 and final vows in February 1993, and was ordained priest in 2001 by Archbishop Paul Verdzekov.

In 1996, Dom Charles was appointed Assistant Novice Master and subsequently went for a course at the Catholic University of Angers in France in 1997. On his return from studies, he was appointed Superior Ad nutum of the Cistercian Monastery at Koutaba. In 1999 he returned to Bamenda to assume the same responsibility, a position he held until 2001. At the Cistercian Order's General Chapter of 2002 he was elected Councilor at the Abbot General's Council in Rome where he was till his election on the 6^th of August as Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery Mbengwi.

We ask you to keep him and the community in your prayers.

Br Luke-Kingsley Ake