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Fr. Francis Mahieu Acharya, a native of Belgium who later became a Cistercian monk there, came to India in 1955 and founded a monastery in 1958. He was a pioneer in a rebirth of Syriac monasticism and of blending it with Indian spiritual traditions, such as the Upanishads, and was later Acharya, or "teacher" (and abbot), of the Kurisumala Ashram. They became officially a part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) in 1988 and follow the liturgy of the Syro-Malankara Church (a Catholic Church in communion with Roman Catholicism).

Georges Agadjanian was a professor at Gannon College in Erie, Pennsylvania at the time of correspondence. He describes himself as a French writer preparing to write for the American audience.

Julian Allan's title suggests he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Rita (Kenter) Anton is an author who writes to Merton from Oak Park, Illinois. She was a mutual friend of Merton's literary agent, Naomi Burton Stone.

Hildebrand Cardinal Antoniutti is writing on behalf of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in Rome.

Robert K. Argentieri worked for Carroll, Kelly and Murphy, Counselors at Law, from Providence, RI, at time of writing.

Fr. Gervasius Augustinius is writing from an Augustinian Monastery in Tanzania.

Living in Karachi, Pakistan, Abdul Aziz can be attributed with sparking Merton's first interest in Sufism, an interest later shared with his novices at Gethsemani. Beginning their correspondence in late 1960, Merton and Aziz would exchange books and ideas. Aziz was introduced to Merton's work through Louis Massignon, a mutual friend. An important insight from these letters is Merton's response to Aziz's request for a description of his prayer life.

J. Martin Bailey was writing as editor of the United Church Herald, the journal of the United Church of Christ.

James Thomas Baker, at the time of writing, was a graduate student in humanities at Florida State University. He was writing an interdisciplinary dissertation about Merton in literature, the arts, and religion (see "Related Information" below). Baker first came to know of Merton's writings while a student of Glenn Hinson at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Catholic theologian from Switzerland. He was the author of over 60 books, which included theology, philosophy and spirituality. He is most famous for his work entitled «Herrlichkeit». (Source: "Balthasar, Hans Urs von." Biography from Chambers Biographical Dictionary. 1997. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 8 Aug. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)

Dom John Eudes Bamberger stepped down as abbot of the Abbey of Our Lady of the Genesee in 2001. He came to Gethsemani in 1951 after having read «The Seven Storey Mountain» in the navy. He was sent to Washington, D.C., for studies in the psychiatric field and later helped Merton and Fr. Matthew Kelty in screening new applicants to the novitiate. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 22-23).

Shojun Bando is writing as the assistant at the Eastern Buddhist Society at Otani University in Kyoto, Japan.

Sr. Elaine Michael Bane was in charge of a group of six Franciscan Sisters from Allegany, New York, in "ritiro", or living a cloistered life of contemplation.

Fr. Colman Barry is writing as Editor of the «American Benedictine Review» (American Benedictine Academy) and involved with the Liturgical Press at Collegeville, Minnesota. He was later to be president of St. John's University.

At the time of writing, Robert Barton was working on a dissertation about "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and had begun as an instructor at Rutgers University.

Fr. Giulio Basetti-Sani is first writing from Via Coeli Home for Aged and Infirm Priest in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Later, he writes from the Friary at St. Bonaventure University in New York. He had written an article of interest to Merton about Islam and Jerusalem.

A student of Sr. Marialein Lorenz in Mobile, Alabama, Gloria Sylvester Bennett was part of the class who sent Merton some ordination gifts. She sends a book by her husband, Lerone Bennett, «Confrontation: Black and White». (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 341.)

Passionist priest, writer, and scholar, Thomas Berry shared an interest with Merton in Asian spiritual traditions and both wrote on the subject. Later describing himself as a "geologian", Fr. Berry would achieve more prominence for his writings on deep ecology and ecospirituality.

Jim Best was Director of Publications for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York and their magazine «Fellowship».

Dom Colomban Bissey served as Abbot of Melleray in France, the mother house of the Abbey of Gethsemani, from 1958-1986. He conducted visitations to Gethsemani as he was Gethsemani's Father Immediate.

At the time of writing, Fon W. Boardman, Jr. was Vice-President of Oxford University Press in New York.

Dr. C. W. van Boekel is writing from the Netherlands on behalf of the Dutch periodical «Ons Geestelijk Leven»

Merton remembered Nancy Hauck Boettcher when he was young and she was a baby in Long Island. After the death of Merton's mother Ruth in 1921, Nancy's grandmother, Freida "Nanny" Hauck came to help Merton's grandparents take care of Thomas and John Paul Merton. Nancy's aunt Elsie married Merton's uncle Harold Jenkins. Harold and Elsie took care of Nanny Hauck at first. According to Nancy, they "threw her out of their house", and she came to live with Walter and Ruth Hauck, Nancy's parents. The difficult situation of her parents taking care of Nanny is the subject of the first letter. At this time, Nancy was married, had a couple of children, and was unable to assist her parents with the care of Nanny. (Source: «The Road to Joy», pp. 57 and 65.)

Jan Boggs was a sophomore at Niskayuna High School in New York.

Fr. Gregory was a Benedictine at Mount Saviour Monastery near Elmira, New York. He went with Dom Aelred Wall to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to found the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Fr. Paul Bourne was the head censor (now called "reader") of the Cistercian Order and needed to approve of Merton's writings before he received the «Imprimi Potest», or permission to publish, from his Order and the Church. He was more considerably more friendly with Merton and more lenient of his works than other censors. Fr. Paul was at Our Lady of the Holy Ghost Abbey (now called the Monastery of the Holy Spirit) in Conyers, Georgia. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 168.)

Fr. Charles Bowers was at the Chaplain's Residence of Lidcombe Hospital in Lidcombe, Australia at the time of writing.

Tony Boyd was a seventh-grader writing from Ashland, Kentucky.

The following memorial for Mahanambrata Brahmachari was written after his death in 1999 by Francis X. Clooney, SJ: Bankim Dasgupta was born in 1904 in Bengal (in a part of India that is now in Bangladesh). In 1925 he was initiated in the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, founded by Sri Caitanya in the fifteenth century, specifically into a sect (the Mahanam Sampradaya) that focused on the power of God’s name, ‘Hari, Krishna’, and at this point took his familiar name Mahanambrata Brahmachari (which might be translated, ‘the monk whose dedication is entirely to the "great name"’). (Source: Clooney, Francis X., S.J. "In Memoriam: Mahanambrata Brahmachari [25 December 1904–18 October 1999]". The Merton Annual, No. 13 [October 2000]: 123-126.)

Nancy Fly Bredenberg was a student attending Vassar College in New York. She asked Merton for some advice on a class paper she was writing.

Bishop Joseph Breitenbeck was serving as the Archdiocese of Detroit at the time of this correspondence.

Dr. Louis J. Broussard was a consulting psychologist from San Angelo, Texas at the time of writing.

Beatrice Bruteau was a friend of Daniel Walsh and had asked Walsh to invite Merton to Fordham University for a conference by the Cardinal Bea Institute of Spirituality (Merton could not go). She writes now to submit a play written by her friend, Helen De Sola, entitled "Pandora's Box". Bruteau received a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University, where she was one of the founders of the Teilhard Research Institute, an interdisciplinary institute dedicated to the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. She has authored many books and articles on the study of philosophy, mathematics and religion, demonstrating the integration of the disciplines and the East-West dialogue in religion. (Source: Merton and Judaism. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae Press. 2003.)

Jacqueline Bull was Head of Special Collections at the University of Kentucky's Margaret I. King Library.

Shirley Burden was a photographer from Beverly Hills, California.

Ethel Burns was writing from New York and seemed to be familiar with some of Merton's Columbia University acquaintances, including Mark Van Doren, whom she mentions seeing on a TV interview in which he spoke of Merton.

T. F. Burns was a founding director of the Tablet publishing company. He worked for, and later became chairman of Burns and Oates publishing company. Both the publisher and the publication were produced for a Catholic audience. However, Burns was not afraid to take some controversial views, such as criticizing «Humanae Vitae» after the Second Vatican Council. He writes to Merton from London. (Source: "The History of the Tablet - a summary of '1840-1990 A Commemorative History, The Tablet' by Michael Walsh" from «The Tablet» website [http://www.thetablet.co.uk/history.shtml].)

Cynthia Bush was Publicity Director for New Directions Publishing Corporation in New York.

During the time of Merton's correspondence with Paul Tillich, Grace Calí Leonard was Tillich's secretary and editorial assistant at Harvard University. Now going by her maiden name of Calí in her later roles as journalist and freelance writer, her book entitled Paul Tillich, First Hand: A Memoir of the Harvard Years was published in 1996, which includes a chapter on Merton and Tillich.

Before the Second Vatican Council was over, Dom Helder Câmara moved from being auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro to archbishop of Olinda and Recife, a very poor region in the northeast of Brazil. Dubbed the "red bishop" by «Time» magazine, he was hailed by some as champion of the poor and labeled as a communist radical by detractors. A famous quote of his is, "When I feed the poor they called me a saint", he once said. "When I asked, 'Why are they poor?' they called me a communist." (Sources: «The Hidden Ground of Love» and The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research [http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/1999/09redbishop.html].)

Charles Cameron was a 20-year-old student from Christ Church College in Oxford England. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 333.)

Fr. Joseph Canivera was a Trappist monk from the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Scourmont in Belgium.

Marie Cantlon was writing on behalf of Harper and Row, Publishers, from New York.

Fr. J. A. Caraman was writing from Umvukwes, Rhodesia (currently Mvurwi, Zimbabwe).

Arthur Graham Carey was the founder of «The Catholic Art Quarterly», later known as «Good Work».

Harry J. Cargas was writing from the Department of English at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He was the former editor of «Queen's Work», who published Merton's introduction to the Japanese edition of «The Seven Storey Mountain». He was a decorated combat veteran who had become a pacifist and liked Merton's writings on non-violence.

Mother Peter of the Holy Face was a Carmelite nun and Prioress of the community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Fr. Robert B. Pfisterer was a Franciscan priest of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Paul-Pierre Cardinal Philippe was a Dominican priest who initially taught at the Pontificium Athenaeum Angelicum in Rome. In 1959, he became secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for Religious. In 1967, he became secretary of Doctrine of the Faith for the Roman Curia, and was elevated to cardinal in 1973. Philippe had been to Gethsemani and spoke to the community.

Gabriel Vahanian was one of the foremost theologians of the Death of God Movement that flourished in the 1960's. Later, he would write about technology and its effects on society and theology, including reflections on the thoughts of Jacques Ellul. Gabriel Vahanian writes to Merton while at his summer residence in Allauch, France. At that time, he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York.

Dom Alferio Caruana was a Maltese Benedictine monk living in Salerno, Italy, and trying to go to Malta. "Dom" is used here as a title of a professed monk and does not mean he was an abbot. Caruana's letter mentions he will be ordained to the priesthood in July of 1967.

George Casey was writing from St. Brigid's Church in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Alice Kathryn Casper lived in Louisville, Kentucky at the time of correspondence with Merton.

Guido Castillo writes from Montevideo, Uruguay.

Sr. Mectildes Vilaça Castro is writing from Brazil.

Joseph Caulfield is writing from the Helicon Press in Baltimore, Maryland.

Humorist, editor and publisher, Bennett Cerf was Chairman of the Board and founder of Random House publishing house in New York. Prior to founding Random House, he had co-purchased the Modern Library series. He was a fellow graduate and editor of «Jester» at Columbia University, but many years prior to Merton's arrival. He later guest starred as a panelist on the TV show "What's My Line?". (Source: "Cerf, Bennett Alfred." «Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Biography», Copyright Helicon Publishing Limited [2000]. «Biography Reference Bank». Online. H.W. Wilson. Available: ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/shared/shared_main.jhtml;jsessionid=FTJAM2QJSVQCJQA3DILSFFWADUNBIIV0?_requestid=100016› 2004/07/19.)

In the introduction to her letters, Br. Patrick Hart says of Nora Chadwick that she was a professor at Cambridge University and "had written a number of books on Celtic monasticism which Merton found very attractive" (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 217).

Mrs. Katharine Champney writes from Cincinnati, Ohio, in response to "Apologies to an Unbeliever", published in the November 1966 issue of «Harper's Magazine» (and later appeared with a related article in the book Faith and Violence).

Dom Anthony Chassagne was abbot of Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina from 1955-1974, having served as a superior before status as an abbey since its founding in 1949.

Merton wrote to the Hon. Frank Chelf, who was with the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

Bill Claire was the founder of the literary magazine «Voyages», based in Washington, D.C.

Sr. Clare Immaculate was writing from the Sisters of Saint Francis in Philadelphia.

Merton writes to Mother Mary Francis Clare, who is in New Orleans. She had attended a meeting at Gethsemani Abbey in December of 1967 of Merton speaking with contemplative nuns.

The letterhead of his letter states that Fr. Clark was of the "Jesuit Mission Band" from St. Louis, Missouri. His ministry was working with those in prison on death row.

Fr. Claude J. Peifer was a Benedictine monk from St. Bede Abbey in Peru, Illinois. He later served as abbot there from 2003-2011.

Dick Coanda was active in the Cursillo Movement in the Catholic Church and served as editor of a small Cursillo newsletter called «Ultreya».

Alan C. Collins was President of the publishing company Curtis Brown, Ltd., and writes from New York.

Thomas Congdon was Senior Editor of «The Saturday Evening Post».

Mother Mary Consolata was Clarissine Abbess of the Madres Clarisas monastery in La Paz, Bolivia.

Sr. Angela Conway was a Dominican sister living in England at the time of writing.

Marty Corbin was editor of the «Catholic Worker», which published some of Merton's essays.

Tom Cornell was active in the Catholic Worker Movement since Merton's contact with him in the 1960's and for many years lived on a Catholic Worker farm. He was a founding member of the Catholic Peace Fellowship (CPF). He was a friend and associate of Dorothy Day and Jim Forest.