Monastery for Kerala

Dom Bede adopts the Syrian Rite
D0M BEDE GRIFFITHS, former Prior of Farnborough Abbey, Hampshire, has received permission from the Holy See to found a monastery in Kerala, India, in the SyroMalankara rite. In this rite the vernacular is allowed to be used.
Dom Bede Griffiths, a convert who became a Benedictine monk of Prinknash, is the author of a favourite spiritual autobiography " The Golden String."
He has sent his news to Tint CATHOLIC HERALD in a letter for publication, as follows:
Founding A Monastery
SIR: It is now over two years since I came out to India in the hope of making a monastic foundation here, and many of your readers who contributed both books and money and still more prayers, to help me, may be wondering what has happened.
I settled first in a village outside Bangalore, where I stayed for a year and a half; but in spite of a promising beginning, it was found impossible to make a foundation there.
I then came into contact with Fr. Francis Mahicu, a Belgian Cistercian, who had come out to India at the same time as I with the same intention, and we decided to work together. He had been attracted to Kerala. the southernmost part of India, where the Church is most strongly established and where he found a very great desire for the monastic life among nearly all the Bishops.
ST. THOMAS The Church is believed to have been established here by the apostle St. Thomas and it has a very ancient and beautiful Syrian rite.
We felt that if the monastic life was to take root here, it would have to be in this Syrian rite, and we have therefore obtained permission from the Holy See to adopt what is known as the SyroMalankara rite. This has the great advantage that it is not only a purely Eastern rite. but is also allowed to be said in the vernacular. so that it has a really popular character.
We have been given 100 acres of lend in the hills by a kind friend and we hope before long to start building a monastery there. It is about 3,500 feet lip and has a good climate and the land seems fertile, so that it should be a good place for a monastery.
We have still a good deal to do to prepare ourselves for our new lite and to form the nucleus of a community, but 1 thought that your readers, who are interested in this work, would like to know of the progress that has been made, and to be assured that their prayers and their alms have not been in vain.
Bede Griffiths, MB.
Holy Redeemer Ashram, Tiruvalla,
Kerala, India.