Frances Levi Cooke’s childhood playground was within the celebrated mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. “My family genealogy celebrates both observant Jews and Catholics,” she said, “so I was educated in the Roman Catholic Church while knowing myself as Jewish.”
As an adult, Frances’ surroundings were the halls of government, where she represented the interests of Fortune 500 clients to state and federal, national and international bodies. In other words, she was a lobbyist. She began visiting Regina Laudis in 1984, having been drawn there by the abbey’s reputation for chant. She became an oblate in 1989 and served the abbey by working with the Act Association.
She would arrive in her shiny black Saab, dressed in an Armani suit, smoking up a storm, and, within minutes, be in work clothes, moving stage furniture at the theater or cleaning the toilets in Sheepfold. She related to Sheepfold right off and recently has organized its renovation. She is our professional planner, making the abbey green while working out cooperative (and financially beneficial) ventures with suppliers such as Connecticut Light and Power, AT&T, FedEx and Kmart.
—At one time I wondered if we could really have in our midst a Jewish person who wanted to hold the flame of Israel and light it in our chambers. As Mother Daniel Levi Cooke, she does. She is a true zaddik.
Elizabeth Schumann first visited Regina Laudis while a student at the University of Connecticut, studying for a degree in fine arts, her specialty being landscape photography.
She entered our land program and just fell in love with the land. During a storm, a cherry tree near the church was knocked down—it really looked like nothing more than a piece of junk and was marked to be cleared out. But Elizabeth responded to the injured tree and asked to tend to it. When it came time for the tree to be cut down, Father Prokes was able to give it a reprieve. She entered Regina Laudis in 1993, and by the time she became Sister Ozanne she was effecting major improvements in our orchards.
—In order to take care of the trees, she created a new kind of work habit. Mother Maria downsized a scapular, and with longer boots, a colorful hardhat and layers of rope draped around her waist, she looks like a character out of Robin Hood.
Marcia Hutchinson was a law student when she first visited Regina Laudis. “I had left the Church and was not a practicing Catholic at that time”, she recalled. “I remember watching the television production of This House of Brede. This story of a London businesswoman who gave up her career to enter a cloistered Benedictine monastery absolutely pierced my heart. I mentioned this to a friend who, coincidentally, was going to visit an abbey the following weekend and asked if I would like to go with her.
“The abbey was Regina Laudis. Well, I must have sobbed the whole weekend in parlors. It was like my whole life came up in front of me; it was that dramatic. I got my law degree and began a career as a land-use attorney, visiting Regina Laudis regularly. I was searching for a way to have a relationship to the abbey as a layperson so, through the eighties, I became part of a group called the Benedictine Elementaries, which served to cement a relationship with the Community. But I still yearned to hook into the intensity of their lives. It was a call that, after twenty years, I finally answered.”
—Marsha entered in 1996, taking on the role of Community videographer almost from the first moment. She also took on the responsibility of tutoring in English young Bernard de la Brunetière, one of several French boys in our land program. She is now Mother Emmanuelle Hutchinson, our guest mistress.
Chant drew Monica Evans, a Wall Street lawyer and a law professor at Santa Clara University, to Regina Laudis. “When I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College,” she said, “I heard a record of chant by the monks of Solesmes, and I went looking for that music. When I first visited Regina Laudis in 1978, I found it. I felt a place that can preserve the chant, even through the bitter cynicism of that era, well, that’s a place to be trusted.” Monica entered in 1996. She is now Mother Elizabeth Evans, the first African-American in the Community.
—When Mother Elizabeth saw the television documentary Which Way Home, about Mexican children attempting to enter the United States illegally, she was shattered by the story of two young boys, Eloy and Rosario, who had survived the dangerous trip across the border riding atop railway cars, only to wind up in the Arizona desert, dead and unclaimed. The image of those boys drove her to search out a place on the abbey land where she could reclaim their lives. She found a piece of earth that had never been tilled or seeded and turned this barren patch into a garden in their names.
Our relationship with Iain Highet was not only continuing; it was gathering strength during this period. In recognition of his dedication to the Community, he was named a monastic scholar and given the name Joseph because of his commitment to care for the life of the Community and its land. He is immensely creative and helped us in developing our ecological consciousness. He became a member of the Luce, a body devoted to the growth of the Community in terms of its energy needs. But, in every area where there was a need of him—be it a problem with an animal, a car, you name it—anywhere there was need for brotherly concern, he was the go-to person.
It was becoming clear to Iain that being a consultant to the abbey was not enough. What he really wanted was to give himself in religious dedication to the abbey. He left to take courses at Holy Apostles Seminary, earning a master’s in divinity without really knowing how that degree would be put to use, and spent some time with the Benedictine monks of Weston Priory in Vermont. But his heart was with Regina Laudis.
He asked to return to the abbey as Brother Iain, a dedicated lay oblate who offered his service wherever it was needed.
—He has always been a brother in that sense.
Tom Pomposello, who had been so concerned over our loss of income when we closed the summer fairs, didn’t fret about it long. I received a presentation from Tom that got my immediate attention because it was written entirely in capital letters. Tom wrote that way when he was enthusiastic.
He wanted the Community to record our chants (he called them the “holy blues”). There were several recordings of chant available, but as they were sung by male choirs, his idea was appetizing. I processed Tom’s plan within the Education Deanery, where it was met with great support. I had an intuition that Lady Abbess would also be enthusiastic because of her conviction that chant had the power to communicate the life of God as no other music does. We got her permission to go ahead with the project on New Year’s Eve 1996.
—Did you also need approval from the Hartford Archdiocese for such an ambitious undertaking?
Oh, as always when something new is introduced, some women in the house thought so. They would write me letters of complaint, asking how I could do such a wicked thing. Those letters were usually very carefully written; I knew a copy would be going to the archbishop. We never asked for permission and never received any comment from the archdiocese.
The pieces chosen for our recording were taken from what was chanted in the monastery on the feast days for Saint Lucy, Saint Agnes and Saint Cecilia, three women who were martyred as Christians. We also included the music for the feast of Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows. This music, presented from a distinctly feminine perspective, was selected because it communicates the irresistible power of love to transform suffering.
We put Tom together with Dr. Theodore Marier, regarded as one of the world’s experts in chant due to his long collaboration with the monks of the Abbey of Solesmes, as well as his recognition by Pope John Paul II as the official guardian of the chant tradition. For over thirty years, our Community had studied chant with Dr. Marier; he had been part of our lives for a long time. He reminded me of Leonard Bernstein. He and Tom got along famously; both were masters.
The album was recorded inside the new church in two sessions. Tom brought in the best recording people and paid for everything out of his own pocket. He would not take a penny for himself, although Lady Abbess tried many times to reimburse him.
Working
on the recording was a learning experience for the Community. Although it was a hand-in-glove operation, it put them in a professional context since the church was transformed into a recording studio. Likewise, the professional people found themselves in the Community’s arena.
—And I was back on a soundstage, so to speak. I found that exhilarating.
Did anyone in the Community have any qualms about performing?
You mean that they thought we weren’t good enough? No. I don’t think they felt the pressure of a professional situation. They were singing as they usually do.
Women in Chant: Gregorian Chants for the Festal Celebrations for the Virgin Martyrs and Our Lady of Sorrows marked the first full Gregorian chant album to be recorded by a choir of American Benedictine nuns. It began as mail order only, but the response by the public was immediate. They sold out the three-thousand-copy run in one month.
Billboard—the magazine devoted to the music industry—listed Women in Chants debut on its Hot 100 chart at number 18, with a bullet! In show-business parlance a bullet means that the record is moving up the chart rapidly—an almost impossible feat in the area of religious music. It caught the attention of Sounds True, a Colorado record label, which picked it up for wider distribution.
During this time, Mother Dolores was meeting with Joyce Arbib regarding the possibility that she had a call to enter religious life. Joyce was then a vice president of Columbia Artists Management in New York, in its division of singers, which boasted the names Frederica von Stade, Samuel Ramey and Elisabeth Soderstrom. In 1998 she would become the eighth postulant in that decade.
—Because of her professional expertise, we relied on Joyce for advice in this new world of contracts. But it would not be the only area in which she would come to my aid.
The moment you had the CD in your hands for the first time, how did you feel?
I don’t think that any film I ever made gave me more joy. This was public witness of the Community. I suppose I was the only one who understood what that meant.
The album has generated orders from across the globe. I was so delighted that it was touching people’s hearts and revealing a hunger in today’s world for the ancient music of chant. With this surprising success, Tom wanted to generate some publicity, but he needed a hook to get it off the ground. He asked if I had any objections to his using me to generate interest. “Your name,” he said, “with all that comes with it—‘Elvis’ leading lady forty years later back in show business ’—can get the CD the attention it needs.”
I thought I might find myself on the firing line again, but I felt it was an opportunity to do what I can do. I felt absolutely that the archbishop had no right to tell us we cannot support ourselves, and this was what we were trying to do. We were also making a real contribution to furthering people’s knowledge of Gregorian chant, an effort that is appropriate to a Benedictine community. As long as I maintained my enclosure, we were sure there would be no interference from the archdiocese. And there was not, although there is a back story that might help explain that.
Before the CD project, in 1994, I had received a letter from Mrs. Bob Hope. I had met Bob years earlier when I appeared on the Photoplay Awards segment of his television show but had never met his wife, Dolores.
The Hopes had funded the building of Our Lady of Hope Chapel at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, and the letter was an invitation to attend its dedication. It would be a great honor indeed, as well as the first time I would leave the enclosure of Regina Laudis for other than medical reasons since my entrance thirty-one years before.
But, and it was a big but, permission to attend had to be granted by the archbishop of Hartford. I had never before made such a request and was reasonably sure he would see the value in extending his consent. I wrote a personal letter to Archbishop Daniel Cronin.
Archbishop Cronin denied permission in a letter that was unnecessarily condescending, saying he would prefer she “refrain from any public appearances or involvement with the movie star community.”
—That’s exactly how he put it. He didn’t say the motion picture community or the entertainment community. No, the “movie star” community. I felt just like Mom at Saint Francis de Sales.
After she simmered down, her mind began ticking. How would this be handled in Hollywood? She wrote to Mrs. Hope with her apologies, carefully suggesting that Archbishop Cronin might have misread the invitation concerning her participation but that she herself was in no position to challenge his decision. However, she added, should Mrs. Hope want to contact the archbishop directly she was certainly within her rights to do so.
Mrs. Hope did one better. She called her friend Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, and asked if he might intercede on their behalf. The cardinal also did one better. He contacted Archbishop Cronin and said that Mother Dolores Hart was to be his guest. Within days Mrs. Hope received a letter from Archbishop Cronin telling her that he was happy to grant the request. No such communique was forwarded to Mother Dolores.
Laywoman Frances Levi Cooke, then Lady Abbess’ volunteer secretary, accompanied Mother Dolores to Washington for the dedication of the chapel and the reception at the Vatican embassy.
Frances in now Mother Daniel, and she remembered the evening as if it had taken place just yesterday. “The Hopes greeted Mother Dolores as if she were an old friend, embracing and kissing warmly. I even heard Mrs. Hope whisper, ‘Don’t muss the makeup, dear.’ The first chance I had, I asked Mother Dolores how long she had known Mrs. Hope, and she said, ‘We just met—Hollywood people.’ ”
Every year following, I received a musical Christmas card from the Hopes, and the Abbey very generous support from Dolores.
After the chapel dedication, which received a great deal of media attention, all of it positive, I got a call from a woman who said she was with the Archdiocese of Hartford and wanted to interview me. When I told her I had been instructed by the archbishop not to do that sort of thing, she said the archbishop had told her to call. This change in the atmosphere, unexpectedly promoted by Mrs. Bob Hope’s Hollywood know-how, coincided with the upcoming release of our CD.
—I don’t think there is a saint in charge of public relations, but if there were, it would be Dolores Hope.
So, I was the news hook for the CD—a far cry from my early days, when I had to refuse every request from media people, some of them belligerently insistent that “it would be such good publicity for you”.
—I would ask them why on earth a cloistered nun would need publicity. I had a reason now.
Our first break came with a few lines in the New York Times Magazine, and it was as if a bomb had exploded: after that we were absolutely inundated with orders for the CD, and I began getting all sorts of requests for interviews, not only from Catholic publications and programs but from National Public Radio and many US and foreign magazines and newspapers. The Today show featured Regina Laudis on its Christmas morning program.
Whenever anyone asked for interviews, the answer was yes as long as it was done here. I could not leave the abbey, but the press could come here.
“When people came,” Mother Abbess said with a smile, “they would also see other areas of the abbey such as the farm and the dairy, the church, the crèche. That was the wonder and the goodness of it. Mother certainly was in her element.”
On the strength of this unexpected success, Dr. Marier asked us to collaborate on a second CD, but before this could be realized, we were all hit with the devastating news that our friend and mentor Tom Pomposello had been killed in an automobile accident. His sudden death at age forty-nine left the Community bereft. Travis Pomposello stepped in to finish his father’s work. Our second album, Recordare: Remembering the Mysteries in the Life of Jesus, Son of Mary, is dedicated to Tom.
Recordare was another success, bringing the combined CDs to over one hundred thousand sold. With appearances on Good Morning America and a featured article in Oprah Winfrey�
��s magazine, O, the nuns of the Abbey of Regina Laudis surfaced as an unexpected musical phenomenon, and this prompted a third recording, Women in Chant: The Announcement of Christmas, giving listeners an opportunity to experience the original Christmas music of the monastic tradition.
The Announcement of Christmas carries listeners through the different phases of the season: the four weeks of Advent, Christmas Eve with the recitation of the genealogy of Christ, Christmas Day and Epiphany. It was again produced by Travis Pomposello—who, like his father, declined any compensation—but this recording does not have Dr. Marier conducting. Sadly, our dear master had passed away before the recording sessions, and Mother Abbess, truly his disciple, replaced him as conductor.
Lady Abbess, who was very ill during this period, was unable to attend the recording sessions but praised our performance, which was the supreme acknowledgment. This was the woman who stood firm during Vatican II and insisted that Regina Laudis would continue the spiritual and aesthetic value of the chant, even when other monasteries were turning to more contemporary musical expressions. I hear her voice even today: “You are singing the Word of God that originated in the Holy Spirit. You have to be really at peace in order to do that successfully.
“When I hear you chanting,” she said to us, “I hear women at peace together.” This was an extraordinary statement because, for the entire decade—when all this was taking place—the women in the Community were living under the darkest cloud conceivable—one that threatened the continuity of our foundation.
The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows Page 41