Our father founder, Abbot William of the Sacred Heart, MMA passed away quietly in the late morning of Sunday, September 19, 2021, the feast of Our Lady of La Salette. He was 89 years old.
Born on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 1932 in Beverly, Massachusetts to William and Elizabeth (Morse) Driscoll, the youngest of four boys, William graduated from St. Mary’s High School in 1950 and immediately joined the Trappist Monastery of St. Joseph in Spencer, MA. He always spoke of his time and training there as exceptional and was most grateful for it. Due to weak physical health, however, he was advised not to make solemn vows and so left the monastery in 1956.
Soon after, he joined the Society of Holy Apostles in Montreal and was ordained a priest on August 31, 1963 by Bishop Damasus Laberge, O.F.M. He was then appointed as Vice Rector of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Washington, D.C. and, a year later, was made Novice Master for the Society of Holy Apostles. Fr. William was appointed Dean of Men in 1975, at their seminary in Cromwell, CT during which time he pursued a doctorate in Clinical Pastoral Psychology at Andover Newton University, which he received in 1977.
Yet the desire to live a monastic life never left him and, so, he requested permission to start a monastic order under Cardinal Medeiros, the bishop of Boston. The order began in Rockport on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, September 8, 1978. It was based on St. Francis of Assisi’s rule for hermits and focused on a life of contemplation and Eucharistic Adoration.
In 1981, enamored with the beauty of the Maronite Liturgy, Fr. William petitioned the Maronite Archbishop, Francis Zayek, first to receive bi-ritual faculties and then, under the same bishop’s direction, to enter the Maronite Church. Bishop Zayek warmly received him and his monks and would be instrumental in establishing the Maronite Monks of Adoration in years to come.
In 1985, after several other moves, Fr. William moved the monastery to Petersham, MA. He was blessed as its abbot on April 21, 1996 by Archbishop Zayek and remained superior of the monastery until his retirement in 2019.
He died as quietly and peacefully as he had lived. A funeral Mass and Burial in the Maronite Catholic Rite was celebrated on Monday, September 20, 2021.
Further details about his life can be found in his autobiography, A Calling, published in 2012.
Please keep him and us in your prayers.
May he rest in peace!