From a Special Correspondent Easter Monday was chosen by the monks of Prinknash for the formal beginning of their great enterprise of building a new abbey.
After the usual High Mass in the little church of the present monastery, the community went in procession to the site, a quarter of a
mile distant, chanting the Litany of the Saints and the Gradual psalms. Here, on a mild spring morning, the Abbot, the Right Rev. Dom Wilfrid Upson, offered the first Mass that has been said on the site, using an altar placed over the foundation-stone that was blessed and laid by Cardinal EIinsley last May.
Behind the altar was the beautiful medieval statue of Our Lady, now called ' Our Lady of Prink naafi." that was given to the community while at Caldey to be used as a shrine for the conversion of England. The Mass was a dialogue one, the monks making the responses.
ANCIENT STATUE FOUND
At its conclusion Abbot Upson gave a short address to his community and to a very few friends who had been invited to attend, in the course of which he announeed that by a singularly happy chance another ancient statue of Our Lady, formerly at Prinleneish but lost for many years. had come to light that very morning
He hailed this as yet one more sign of Our Lady's interest in and protection of the work.
Work prayers were then said and spades produced Each of the monks in turn removed a sod and the ceremony was very happily ended. Work will now go on steadily, and at the big gathering of friends expected at the site on WhitMonday there will be a good opportunity to inspect the progress.