The Mission of St. Benedict's Prep
A Statement by the Monks of Newark Abbey (August, 1989)
The Benedictine Monks of Newark
Abbey, committed to the city of Newark by our vow of
Stability of Place, sponsor and staff Saint Benedict's
Prep, a Catholic preparatory school for boys in grades
seven through twelve. In the fifteen-hundred-year-old
tradition of monastic schools, Saint Benedict's
witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ through what
the Church calls a preferential option for the poor. By
design, then, the student population reflects the
racial, religious and socioeconomic mixture of the
school's primary drawing area (the nearby urban
neighborhoods of Newark, East Orange and Irvington), but
includes residents of outlying towns as well. Many of
our students come from a background which is severely
impoverished by the racism of our society and which
leaves them at a competitive disadvantage in academics
and indeed in daily living. We enlist men and women who
share our vision to assist us in our task of helping
parents in their sacred duty of educating their children
according to Christian principles. Thus we offer a
demanding college prep curriculum in the setting of a
community that stresses Christian values, especially
self-respect, fraternal cooperation and the primacy of
the spiritual dimension in every phase of a person's
life.
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