Celtic Orthodox Church
BISHOP PAUL DUPUIS
Bishop Paul Dupuis was born on 27 February 1942. His parents named him Kenneth. Of French origin, his Catholic family lived in Garner, Massachusetts. In those days, people were naturally religious and pious, and little Kenneth grew up in the Christian faith with his two brothers. During his childhood, he attended a Catholic school run by the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. At the age of eight, a rabbi from Gardner's Jewish community prophesied to him that he would become a religious, because in a vision he saw him wearing a brown monastic habit. This same rabbi told him that he would later learn Hebrew.
Between 1966 and 1968, he spent a year at the prestigious Sorbonne faculty of literature in Paris and travelled to Greece and Mount Athos, the famous peninsula where hundreds of Orthodox monks live. At the Iviron monastery, he was overwhelmed by the miraculous icon known as the "portaïtissa". He felt a particular calling that would influence his destiny.
He returned to the United States, but the country was plunged into race riots by the assassination of Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968. The riots spread to several major cities, including Worcester in Massachusetts, where he lived. He preached the non-violence of Martin Luther King to young people in the black community.
In 1969, he was a French teacher at Old Forge in New York, then at Oakmont in Massachusetts.
Since 1965, the Americans had been waging a massive war in Vietnam. From 1969 onwards, the American people were opposed to this war and various demonstrations took place until 1972. He was part of a small group campaigning against the Vietnam War and wrote anti-war poems. Called by the authorities to be drafted, he shouted anti-war poems and slogans on the bus to Boston with other young people. Refusing to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he fled to Canada and sought the protection of the Canadian government as a conscientious objector.
In 1968, he worked in a bookshop in Montreal. He married in the Catholic Church. During this period, he became acquainted with a traditionalist Christian community that had broken with Rome following the Second Vatican Council. After a short marriage, he and his wife agreed to join the religious life of this Christian family.
On 29 June, he was ordained a priest and three years later took his monastic vows on 28 April 1972. His final solemn vows took place on 27 March 1975. He was sent on mission to Guadeloupe for a year and a half, then to Italy to help found a monastery at San Michele in Teverina in Tuscany.
Around 1980, he was sent to the Dominican Republic. There he founded a poor little monastery and chapel near Cristo Rey, a district of the capital Santo Domingo. He began this mission with only a few dollars in his pocket. For several weeks, he ate mainly grapefruit. He slept on the ground in a tool shed lent to him.
He worked with peasants and poor people in the capital. For more than two decades, he ministered to the poorest people in the shantytowns, delinquents and drug addicts.
Throughout his life, Mgr Paul wrote poetry. He is considered a great poet in the Dominican Republic. He was also interested in Hindu mysticism, which he explored following in the footsteps of the Benedictine Dom Henri Le Saux. He has given several lectures on this tradition compared with Christian mysticism.
In 2003, he was forced to leave his religious community because of doctrinal issues, which he felt were no longer in line with the faith of the Church. He returned to Boston and found work at Shoenhoffs bookshop in Cambridge, a city on the outskirts of Boston. He decided to keep his religious habit to preserve his monastic life and prayed to the Virgin Mary to find him a new community. He obtained a position as professor of French at Harvard University's prestigious Divinity School in the department of literature and spiritual and mystical writings until 2016.
During a trip to France in 2008, he visited the Sainte-Présence monastery of the Celtic Orthodox Church. He immediately realised that the Lord had answered his prayer. He discovered that Bishop Mael, then Primate of the Celtic Orthodox Church, was born in the same town as Gardner, attended the same school and lived two streets away from his own.
They did not know each other, as they were a generation apart. Bishop Mael entrusted him with the mission of founding a monastery in America.
He left Boston for Berryville in the state of Virginia in 2015. The Church then acquired a house on an isolated site at Tom's Brook near the town of Woodstock, which became a dependency of the Sainte-Présence monastery in France under the abbatial and ecclesiastical authority of the primate of the Celtic Orthodox Church.
His ability to speak several languages enabled him to maintain numerous spiritual relationships with many people around the world. He was much appreciated for his kindness and goodwill towards everyone.
During the celebration of the Easter Liturgy last April, 2023, he fainted. The doctors diagnosed pancreatic cancer. His brother Peter took him to Boston for treatment at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Despite treatment, the disease spread and it became clear that his days were numbered. On 12 September, the Primate of the Celtic Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Marc, arrived in Bolton to assist Bishop Paul in his final days. He collected his last spiritual thoughts, which he considered to be his testament. He died a holy death at precisely 7.27pm on 19 September 2023, the feast day of Our Lady of La Salette.
Bishop Paul sowed the Word of God and the spirit of the great tradition of the Western Orthodox Church in America
This Church was independent of Rome for the first thirteen centuries of Christian history and was restored in 1866, gradually recovering its rite, customs and traditions. Bishop Paul is now a powerful intercessor before God, and we firmly believe that his work will continue in the ways that the Lord has already decided.
May his memory be eternal and may his prayer help us for the glory of God, in the service of his love for all people and all creation.
Celtic Orthodox Church
A tribute to Bishop Paul
Dear brothers and sisters,
First of all, I'd like to wish you all a very happy and healthy 2024.
For the first time, I'm contacting you directly.
Although you were able to follow my teachings on our YouTube channel, Bishop Paul, Father Paul as he was known, was your main link with the Celtic Orthodox Church. His birth in heaven on September 19, 2023, leaves many people spiritually orphaned. I don't pretend to replace the spiritual father he was, but we were very close, as I was his confessor, abbot and primate.
I'd like to shed some light on the monk-bishop he was and the ties that bound him to the monastery of Sainte-Présence. Since his entry into monastic life in 1973, in a Latin-rite community in Canada, he has always lived in poverty, chastity and obedience, the three mystical pillars of monastic life. We know of his spiritual journey through his various missions, particularly in the slums of the Dominican Republic. Every week, he would send me a summary of all his daily activities. He never made an important decision without referring to me or asking my opinion, although as Bishop-Eparch of America, he had a certain degree of autonomy.
Despite the distance, we were constantly in touch as he needed to feel supported and united with the monastic community of brothers and sisters of the Church of France. With the six-hour time difference between the U.S. East Coast and France, we regularly had telephone meetings in the evening, and even at night. In addition to matters of Church life and spirituality, we shared the same taste for early Italian and Baroque music, as he was very fond of Italy, almost as much as of France. By videoconferencing, we were also able to allow him to share certain moments of our monastic life.
It was with joy and gratitude that he spent between two and three months each year at the Sainte-Présence monastery, but it was with a certain nostalgia that he left us to return to his mission at Tom's Brook, even though he was happy to be where the Lord wanted him to be.
When he learned of his impending death, he wanted to die with his brother monks. It was his dearest wish, but it was already too late, as his health was deteriorating by the day. It was therefore clear that the Lord wanted him to die on the soil of his birth, and we agreed that he should be buried in his monastery at Tom's Brook.
I was able to free myself from my obligations and come to his bedside in Bolton, Massachusetts, at the home of his brother Peter and sister-in-law Stacey. With them, he received assistance, care and as much love as a sick person could wish for. I arrived on September 12, and he gave up his soul to God on the 19th. During the last week of his life, we spoke at length, and I shared these moments and their spiritual content with you in my letters. In this way, I was able to bring him a monastic presence on behalf of my brothers and sisters, and prepare him for the great passage to the Father's house. I celebrated a Eucharistic Liturgy, some excerpts from our monastic offices which he murmured with me; his voice had become very weak. Finally, after a last confession and the prayers for the dying, I gave him extreme unction.
He didn't want to be too sedated, to keep his conscience intact despite his suffering. That didn't stop him from having a good word to say from time to time to delight us. We all know his sense of humor and the kindness of his words. Fully surrendered into the hands of God, he was filled with a profound mystical joy that illuminated the last moments of his life. Two days before he drew his last breath, I prayed to the Lord and to the Blessed Mother of God to come and take him away, to put an end to his suffering. When I told him of my prayer, he replied that he would accept whatever suffering God asked of him.
On the evening of the 19th, his breath became more rapid, more jerky, then more spaced out. Surrounded by Peter, Stacey and their daughter Catherine, and by yours truly, he passed away like the flame of a candle that has consumed all its wax. I immediately celebrated a service for the departed. That evening, he was carried off by the funeral service. The next day, with Stacey's help, I dressed him in his monastic habit before he was laid to rest in his coffin. I concluded the ceremony with a few hymns from the Office for the Deceased and a final blessing.
His body was scheduled for transport to Virginia on Saturday 23rd. In fact, he arrived on Friday. Due to several people coming from far away, even abroad, we scheduled his funeral for Monday morning, the 25th. A group of three people had come from France on September 18 to assist me and take charge of the now empty monastery. They were welcomed by Father Robert Gillispie, who was visiting Virginia on business. On this occasion, he visited Mgr à Paul from time to time.
A few details about the "Our Lady of the Holy Presence" monastery in Tom's Brook. Founded in 2015, it is a monastic property of the Celtic Orthodox Church. Sent on mission by Mgr Mael, my predecessor, Mgr Paul was a missionary attached to the Sainte-Présence monastery, which largely financed the mission and his own needs.
He had a great veneration for St. Francis of Assisi and St. Tugdual de Saint-Dolay, and felt constantly buoyed by the presence and intercession of Mgr Mael. He was truly their spiritual son, and had a deep fraternal and spiritual bond with all of us.
Before the Tom's Brook mission, there were several attempts in the United States, notably in Davis, California. I went there three times with Bishop Mael. We met a saintly nun, Sister Clotilde, whose confessor was Mgr Mael. She died on October 25, 1993, and was canonized on August 10, 2008. Our sisters' monastery in Saint-Dolay is dedicated to Saint Clotilde-de-Californie. So the mission of Tom's Brook already had a powerful intercessor with God on American soil. So it was in a soil already prepared that Mgr Paul sowed the seeds of faith according to the spirit of our fathers and in our spiritual traditions.
This seed must germinate and grow. So we need to continue the mission, even if there's no one to take over at the moment. In the not-too-distant future, I would propose a spiritual framework with a material perspective to continue the construction of the chapel and other projects for the remaining buildings. I hope to return this year with a small group for a mission, the details of which I have yet to define. But for the time being, as Bishop Paul did, I'll be sending you regular teachings on various subjects, so that all the members of the Church feel united in the same spirit. I don't speak English properly, but today's translation software is powerful enough to make an English, Spanish or other version quite acceptable. I'll get back to you with more details on these future prospects.
Mgr Paul, watch over his monastery and the work he has begun. We can be sure that he is interceding for us all and that he is very much present at Tom's Brook and in his American eparchy. That's the gist of what I wanted to say. Bishop Paul had a great devotion to the Virgin Mary. He placed his monastery under her protection.
Let us pray that she will protect us, her monastery and the land of America. May she guide us to her Son in everything and for everything.
May our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the source of all good, peace and joy, bless you!
+ Marc, your servant and primate of the EOC.
