Obituary

Brother Paul Wessinger SSJE, former Superior of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Episcopal) died on Friday, 22 May 2009 in the ninety-fifth year of his life, the sixty-fifth year of his religious profession and the day before the sixty-ninth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.

Brother Paul came from a prominent family in Portland, Oregon, where he spent the early years of his life. He was a graduate of Harvard College (‘36) and The General Theological Seminary, New York City (‘39). He received an honorary Doctorate in Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1998.

Brother Paul was ordained a deacon in 1939 and made a priest the following year. He entered the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in 1940 and was life professed in 1945. For a number of years he served as an orderly on the men’s surgical ward of MGH. He was there the night of the disastrous Coconut Grove nightclub fire in 1942 and assisted with treating many of the casualties. In 1965 he participated with other clergy and religious from Massachusetts in one of the Selma Freedom Marches. He served the Society in a number of ways, most notably as vicar of the Society’s then Parish of St. Augustine and St. Martin; as Novice Guardian; and later as Superior from 1972 to 1983. It was during his time as Superior that many monumental changes were made in the Society’s life, including opening the Guest House to women and bringing our worship into congruence with liturgical changes being made in the wider Episcopal Church. Paul was one of the early advocates for the ordination of women.

For all of his life Paul had close contacts with the Roman Catholic Church, and in the days shortly after the Second Vatican Council, he was instrumental in beginning the Arlington Conferences which brought Episcopal and Roman Catholic religious together for a week of shared prayer and conversations. Those conferences gave birth to a number of experiments in ecumenical monastic communities. Following a brief time in one such community Paul was invited by the Sisters of the Love of God, an English Anglican monastic community for women, to act as the warden and chaplain to a new branch house for sisters in Kent, England. This was to be a transformative experience for Paul as it gave him scope to read widely in French theology and spirituality, to try innovative liturgical experiments, and to garden, passions which were to remain with him for the rest of his life.

Following his retirement as Superior, Paul was one of the founding members of our branch house in Durham, North Carolina where he lived until 1994 when he returned to the monastery in Cambridge. A noted spiritual director Paul influenced the lives of countless people within the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion and beyond. For the last years of his life he lived at the Jeanne Jugan Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Somerville.

The Burial Office and Eucharist of the Resurrection will be held at the Monastery Chapel at 980 Memorial Drive, Cambridge on Tuesday, 16 June at 11:00 AM. Interment of ashes will take place at Gethsemane Cemetery, Foxborough MA at a later date.