NEW ABBOT

Our dear friend Abbot Neal Roth, O.S.B. retired earlier this year and so a new abbot was elected for Saint Martin's Abbey in Lacey, WA.  ABBOT MARION, the ninth abbot of Saint Martins, was born in Can Tho, South Vietnam, in 1976.

He is the second of four children of Thien Nguyen and Thu-Trinh Pham of Everett, Washington. When he was four, his family escaped South Vietnam by boat, was raided by sea pirates and eventually arrived in Thailand, where they lived in a refugee camp for three years. In the mid-1980s, the family began a new life in Washington, where Abbot Marion attended Immaculate Conception Grade School in Everett and Bishop O’Dea High School in Seattle.

He did his studies in philosophy at Saint John Vianney Seminary and the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota and theology at the Gregorian University and the Angelicum while residing at the North American College. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Seattle on 12 June 2004.

Since priestly ordination, he has held the following offices: parish vicar of St Joseph parish in Vancouver, the cluster of St Edward parish, St Paul parish, St George in Seattle and Sacred Heart parish and Assumption parish in Bellingham, priest administrator, the pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Bellingham. While there he was chaplain of the Newman Catholic Campus Ministry at Western Washington University.

After receiving permission from Archbishop J. Peter Sartain in 2012, he entered as a postulant of Saint Martin’s Abbey, making his first vows on 15 August 2013, receiving the name Marion. He made final profession on 11 July 2016.

Abbot Marion reads and speaks Vietnamese, French, English, Spanish and Italian; his hobby is digital photography.

Abbot Marion was  a doctoral student in the Monastic Institute of the Pontifical University of Sant’Anselmo in Rome, and will finish his studies - on line.

Abbey Church

On August 15, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, Abbot Marion will receive the blessing as Abbot. Due to the coronavirus, it will be a closed ceremony, but one which we are sure will be a happy occasion for the monks.  We pray for this young new Abbot, that his road ahead be as grace-filled and fruitful as was Abbot Neal’s.