50 Years a Priest

of Priestly Service

Fr. Duane Roy celebrates the 50th Anniversery of his ordination

Father Duane Roy, member of St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, Kansas, since 1960, was ordained to the priesthood June 2, 1967. This was during the post-Vatican II days, when the Abbey was working to establish St. Joseph Priory in Mineiros, Goiás, Brazil. Monks were regularly being sent to and from this new mission.

Newly ordained, Fr. Duane helped in various parishes staffed by Benedictine monks from the Abbey during that summer, and also served as hospital chaplain. In the fall of 1967, he enrolled in a master’s degree program at Emporia State College. He served four years at Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas, as weekend civilian military chaplain during the build-up of the Vietnam War.

Soon, he felt the call to missionary life and requested of his abbot to work with the other Kansas Monks at the Priory in Brazil, founded in 1962. He and Brother Robert Heiman, along with two Benedictine Sisters from Mount St. Scholastic Monastery, traveled to Brazil in September 1971, four years after his ordination.

Fr. Duane is the fifth of ten children of John and Olive Morin Roy. Raised on a farm in Western Kansas, and educated in public schools, he was active in sports, 4-H, and parish life serving as an altar boy. All four of his paternal and maternal grandparents were French-Canadian immigrants.

After 46 years as a missionary in Brazil and a variety of pastoral and monastic duties, he is currently the only North American member of St. Joseph Priory in Mineiros, Goiás, where the Monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey founded their priory. Over the years, Fr. Duane served as Prior, Novice Master, and Pastor. For eight years, he served as Vicar General in the Prelature of Cristalândia, Tocantins, where Bishop Herbert Hermes, another Benedictine from Atchison, served for 19 years as bishop. Among his many activities, Fr. Duane also taught human relations in a pre-nursing program in a state high school in Brazil, and sociology, for ten years, in the first local college in Mineiros, Goiás, co-founded by Father Eric J. Deitchman in 1984, where Fr. Duane served twice on the Board of Directors. He contributed to the formation of religious men and women, and to priesthood students, as well as assisting the formation of men to the permanent diaconate in the Diocese of Jataí, where St. Joseph Priory is located. Fr. Duane conducted retreats for religious women preparing for profession, for seminarians and lay deacons preparing for ordination. He facilitated men and women in the Cursillo Movement and couples in Marriage Enrichment Encounters. At the Mineiros Benedictines’ Parish, he assisted in the formation of several urban and rural sub-communities, which are still active today.

His work and position took him to Rome in 1980 for the celebration of the 1500th year of St. Benedict’s birth; to Buenos Aires in 1978; to Mexico City in 1984; to Rio de Janeiro in 1990 and 2006 for International Encounters of Monastic Groups in Latin America.

The celebration of his 50th Jubilee of Ordination was held at the Abbey in Atchison on Ascension Sunday where many of his relatives joined the monks in praise and gratitude. On July 15, he will celebrate with parishioners, diocesan clergy, and religious of diverse congregations at St. Benedict’s Parish in Mineiros, Brazil, where he presently serves. Fr. Duane is a true blue Kansas Monk, a descendent from the sturdy French Canadian colonists who came to West-Central Kansas during the nineteenth century. He Fr. Duane Roy (center) was ordained at has lived in Brazil and the Abbey in 1967. He has spent nearly ministered there for forty all of his priestly ministry serving in five years. In his selfBrazil; currently he assists at a São effacing way, he has held Bento in Mineiros, Goiás. leadership roles there, but most of all, he was and is a Christ–bearer to grateful people in that nation, bringing Christ to them in the Eucharist and in his pastoral care of both the monastery and the parish in Mineiros. May he continue to bring the Lord to many for years to come!. -Fr. Denis Meade