This weekend the monastic community remembers Jean Dupiéreux OSB on the 70th anniversary of his death.
Maurice François Joseph Ghislain Dupiéreux was born in Florennes, Belgium, on 22nd September 1888. Following matriculation in the natural sciences and the humanities at the Collège Nôtre Dame de La Paix in Namur, he entered the Abbey of Maredsous on 5th October 1908. He received the name of Jean-Baptiste. He was professed on 7th February 1910.
Between 1902 to 1912 he studied philosophy in Maredsous and from 1912 to 1914, theology in Mont-César in Louvain. He was ordained priest on 19th September 1915. Having served as an army chaplain during the First World War, he taught in the Abbey School at Maredsous from early 1919 to October 1925. He then administered the local parish of St Martin until 1929 when he came to Glenstal as bursar.
Father Jean served as bursar until 1945, and was novice master from 1942 to 1948. When the monastery became independent, he changed his stability to the new Conventual Priory. He served as instructor to the lay-brothers from 1949 until his death. Here in Glenstal and in the neighbourhood he was known as Father John.
His abiding interest was in the scouting movement, in particular the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland. It was he who began the series of summer-camps for scouts, which lasted until the 1990s. Although he had received the usual service-medals for his role in the First World War, he was most proud of the Bronze Medal of Merit awarded him by the Court of Honour of the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland on 18 th March 1953. The esteem in which he was held by the scouting movement was reflected in the guards of honour that attended his removal, the overnight vigil and Requiem in the old chapel and the bearer-party of scouts who carried his coffin to the monastic grave-yard.
He died in St John’s Hospital, Limerick, on 29th February 1956.
May he rest in peace.