Collins, Frederic, Br., O.C.S.O.

Br. Frederic Collins is a monk of Gethsemani Abbey. Because of his business studies before entering the monastery, Dom James Fox appointed him to start a mail-order business for the cheese and fruitcake that was made by the monks. This type of monastic consumerism did not appear to Merton, and the two did not see eye to eye. In the mid-sixties, he was sent to La Dehesa Monastery in Chile that Gethsemani was taking over as a mission from Spencer Abbey (becoming an independent monastery in 1970, and moving and changing its name to Miraflores in 1986). Unlike the mail order business, Merton was very interested in Latin America and considered this as a place to become a hermit. At this time, the two monks became closer. [Sources: personal account by Br. Frederic Collins (June 2003) and Web site of AIM (Inter-Monastery Alliance) ‹http://www.aimintl.org/communs/miraflores/miraflores.htm›.]