Benedictine monastery is looking for a couple to manage its hotel business : this is, in a way, the appeal launched by the six nuns who live in Prailles, in Deux-Sèvres. With around fifteen rooms to accommodate guests on site, they need additional help, almost twenty-five years after their move into this old farmhouse.
Accommodation versus services
“We rather looking for a couple who could both manage, host, and offer retreats for the hotel industry, explains Sister Anne-Delphine, mother prioress of the community. There would also be the aspect of setting up a project for this place.” The challenge for the religious community is to find volunteers who are able to lend a hand also for the daily management of the buildingwhether it involves routine maintenance, making the connection for more important work, developing the production of honey from hives, or even relaunching the monastic printing press managed by the congregation.
In exchange for these services, the future managers of the hotel part of the monastery will be accommodated free of charge : “40 square meters, with two bedrooms upstairs, specifies the prioress. It’s away from the hotel rooms so they have their space, so they’re not on the guest side 24 hours a day.” If the Benedictine sisters thus intend to permanently have a couple not from the clergy at their side, it is however expected that they “participate at a minimum in the services and religious life.
Lack of staff
For several months now, the Congregation of the Benedictines of Notre-Dame du Calvaire, to which the Prailles monastery belongs, has been actively seeking to recruit: the Benedictines have therefore requested a consultancy firm to help them with the process. “We have a few people who try to call the monastery store directly but we redirect them to the email ([email protected]) to apply”explains Marie-Paule, who lives in the area and volunteers one or two mornings a week.
“It’s necessary find a balance between our life of prayer, our life of fraternal community, and all the material, administrative side, increasingly heavy and complex”, says sister Anne-Delphine. While there were around twenty Benedictines in 1999, today there are almost four times fewer. Their passing guests are already helping out, like these Quebec women, who came for a month as part of an association exchange. “We give 25 hours of our time per week, in exchange for accommodationsays Marjolaine, originally from Ottawa. We discovered a spiritual side, it’s a reciprocal exchange.”
