Abbot Rooney named to head Tulsa Institute of Sacred Liturgy

Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB, former pastor of St. John the Baptist Church in Brinkley, was recently named president of the new Institute of Sacred Liturgy at the Diocese of Tulsa, Okla.

Before he left Brinkley in July to begin his new position, he sat down with Arkansas Catholic to talk about his time in the small Arkansas parish and his goals for the institute he is developing.

For the past two years, this world-renowned liturgical scholar and former Benedictine liaison to the pope quietly served about 50 Catholic families in Brinkley, located about an hour east of Little Rock. Though he has worked for the Church his whole life, this was only the second time he had done so on the parish level.

The 70-year-old former abbot of Conception Abbey in Missouri, who holds a doctorate in sacred theology, has been a college professor and chancellor in Rome, as well as lecturer, composer, chaplain and advisor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy. From 1996-2000 he served as abbot primate (head) of the worldwide Benedictine Confederation, making him his religious order's liaison to Pope John Paul II...

at the Arkansas Catholic here