Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2016 | Page 27

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Interview

words by Jackie Mc Carrick : Photos by Martin Potter & Ana Dobeson

A NEW ERA FOR

Quarr Abbey

Photo: The new abbot is incensed by the deacon
during the Offertory of the Mass

Back then, Fr Xavier was visiting the Island’s religious
community from his home monastery in South Brittany
- which is part of the same Benedictine congregation –
and like most people, he was captivated by the place.
What he didn’t realise at the time was that, two decades
later, he would be elected as its Abbot.
“I had no idea I would ever come back – and especially
not in this position!” said Fr Xavier, who officially became
Abbot of Quarr in May.
The Isle of Wight is certainly very different from
the university city of Tours, in the central Loire Valley
region,where he was born in 1958, and brought up
in a Roman Catholic family. Initially he chose to study
literature in Rennes and then art history at the Sorbonne
– although he admits that he always harboured ‘religious
aspirations’.
“I happened to visit a monastery in France when I was
15, and was fascinated by what seemed to me such a
strange way of life” he explained.
“I saw that these men were so separated from ordinary
life, and yet could be happy and last in this life so long.
There was something strange about it and I had to work
out what it meant”.
Finally, by his early 20s, Fr Xavier had come to his own

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