The former abbot of the Gerleve monastery, Pius Engelbert, is dead. Engelbert died on Sunday at the age of 87 after “patiently enduring illness” at the nursing station of the Annenthal monastery in Coesfeld, the Gerleve monastery announced on Sunday. The Gerlever old abbot led the monastery in Billerbeck in Münsterland from 1999 to 2006. The redesign of the abbey church also took place during this time. The requiem for the deceased and his burial will take place on October 14th in the monastery cemetery in Gerleve.
Engelbert was born in Cologne in 1936 and entered the Gerleve monastery in 1956. After studying philosophy and theology at the Benedictine religious college of Sant’Anselmo in Rome, he was ordained a priest in 1962. From 1981 to 1999 Engelbert was professor of church history in Rome. After his retirement as abbot in 2006, he lived again in Sant’Anselmo and was once again active academically. In 2013 Engelbert returned to Gerleve. In 2010, the religious congregation appointed him apostolic visitor to Ettal Abbey to investigate the abuse scandal there. Engelbert was considered an internationally recognized expert on medieval church history and an expert on the Latin language. (Rome)
