Basil Pennington

M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. (1931–2005) was an American Trappist priest and leading spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, and director. He became known internationally as one of the major proponents of the centering prayer movement begun at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, during the 1970s.

Life

Pennington entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance at St. Joseph's Abbey in June 1951. He received the licentiate in Theology in 1959 from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum. He also earned a licentiate in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. At St. Joseph's Abbey, he was appointed professor of theology in 1959, professor of canon law and professor of spirituality in 1963, and vocations director in 1978. In 2000, he was appointed superior at Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri, and later that same year he was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. He returned to St. Joseph's Abbey after retiring in 2002. He died on June 3, 2005, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, from injuries sustained from a car accident.

Bernard McGinn wrote that Pennington "not only wrote effectively about centering prayer, but he also traveled across the United States and the world spreading the practice through lectures and workshops. The renewal of contemplative prayer in the last decades of the twentieth century owes much to these efforts."