Submitted by Saint Martin’s University
Saint Martin’s Abbey has established an endowment worth more than $600,000 for student scholarships at Saint Martin’s University.
The amount of $601,965 marks the largest gift to date that the Abbey has bestowed on the institution, according to the Rt. Rev. Neal Roth, abbot of Saint Martin’s Abbey and University chancellor.
“Our monks are passionate about keeping this school flourishing – this is our Abbey mission,” Roth said, in announcing the creation of the Pohl-Wager Endowed Scholarship, which he said received very strong support from the Saint Martin’s Abbey Board of Directors when it recently approved the endowment.
“When the Abbey founded the school 120 years ago, the objective was to provide a school to teach academics but to also give students the morals and ethics to follow for the rest of their lives,” the abbot said.
The number of monks in residence at the Benedictine Abbey is fewer than in years past, said Roth, “but we still want to continue to make an impact on the university – and this scholarship endowment is one way we can do that.”
The abbot said the endowment should provide $24,000 annually for Saint Martin’s students.
Funds for the endowment are a combination of monies received from the estates of the families of two monks who are deceased – Father Thaddeus Arledge, who died in April, and Father Terence Wager, who died in 2010. The Abbey also contributed some of its own funds to the endowment.
“In every conversation I have with alumni, it is the monks who have given the alumni their greatest memories of Saint Martin’s University and this gift is another example of the Abbey’s love for our students and their potential,” said Cecelia Loveless, vice president of Institutional Advancement. “I really believe this gift is the heart and soul of how we came to be and where we plan to go.”
