In the heart of downtown Newark, where high-rises stretch into sky and stories run deeper than pavement, stands a school that refuses to give up on young people. That school is St. Benedict’s Prep, and at its helm is Fr. Edwin Leahy, OSB - a man who has spent more than half a century building bridges between people, places, and possibilities.

Fr. Edwin wasn’t always destined for this. In fact, he was rejected the first time he applied to the school as a student in 1959. It was only through his father’s persistence - and a pastor with Benedictine ties - that a letter of intercession changed the trajectory of a 13-year-old boy’s life. “That moment,” Fr. Edwin recalls, “changed the whole course of not only my life, but a lot of other people’s lives.”

That sense of calling, of being drawn to a place he hadn’t even fully understood yet - shaped him from his earliest days at St. Benedict’s. “I remember standing in the hallway, waiting for my gym lock, and knowing: I belong here,” he said. And decades later, through Newark’s trials and triumphs, he’s still here.

A School Like No Other

St. Benedict’s Prep is no ordinary institution. It's a powerhouse of hope for nearly 1,000 students, most of whom are students of color and come from underserved backgrounds. In many ways, it’s a living embodiment of what education can look like when it prioritizes community, trust, and resilience.

But it hasn’t always been easy. The 1967 Newark uprising shook the city - and the monastery - to its core. Fourteen monks left. Buildings were abandoned. Fear spread. But a few chose to stay, and Fr. Edwin was one of them. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” he admits. “Which was, in many ways, a blessing. It meant we had to build something new.”

That “something new” was rooted in deep belief in young people. What began with a handful of students in a crumbling city has become a national model for leadership, experiential education, and transformative community. Fr. Edwin’s philosophy, shaped in part by mentors like Fr. Mark Payne and the book The Headmaster by John McPhee, is simple: “Don’t do for kids what they can do for themselves.”

So, the school lets kids lead. They organize. They hold each other accountable. They hike the Appalachian Trail at the end of the school year in groups of eight, without adults, to learn trust and leadership. The results are extraordinary.

Enter the Benedictine Volunteer Corps

Since 2003, the Benedictine Volunteer Corps has sent volunteers to walk alongside this powerful mission. The very first BVC volunteer placement was at St. Benedict’s Prep - a partnership born not just out of practicality, but of spiritual kinship. “We all know each other’s houses in the congregation,” Fr. Edwin says. “So when Brother Paul had the idea for the BVC, we weren’t strangers.”

Over the past two decades, dozens of Saint John’s graduates have come to Newark to give a year of their lives. And it matters.

“It’s huge,” Fr. Edwin says. “When you have people here - talented, young, faithful - giving themselves to the service of the kids, and you don’t have to carry that financial burden as an institution… It’s enormous for a place like this. It advances the mission.”

But the gift is mutual. Volunteers leave transformed. Raised, in a sense, a second time - just like Fr. Edwin was. “I was raised once in the suburbs,” he shares, “but I was raised again here, by the people of this city — by African Americans who showed me a different way to be close, to love, to lead.”

Looking Ahead: What the BVC Can Do Better

While the BVC continues to be a stable lifeline for SBP, Fr. Edwin offers a challenge to strengthen the bond even further: better preparation.

“Every year we get volunteers, and every year we throw them into the deep end,” he says, laughing. “They figure it out. But what if we could do more ahead of time? Have them visit, talk to staff, shadow classrooms? It would help them - and it would help our students trust them sooner.”

And for the students of SBP? “Give them the chance to see more,” Fr. Edwin says. “Let them see St. John’s. Let them see Minnesota. I believe that no one can take away from you who you’ve met and where you’ve been. The more our kids experience, the more they can grow.”

A Legacy of Presence

Fr. Edwin Leahy is a man of presence - not just the monastic kind, but the kind that listens deeply, embraces suffering, and stays rooted even when the ground shakes. His story, and that of St. Benedict’s Prep, is proof of what happens when community and calling collide.

“This is the oldest BVC site,” he reminds us. “But it’s not a relic. It’s a living, breathing part of what Benedictine service looks like in America today.”

For anyone wondering what Benedictine volunteerism can do, Newark offers a simple, enduring answer: it changes lives - on both sides of the equation.

In the spring of 2003, Quinn Martin was staring down the barrel of a college graduation with no plan in sight. An English major with a Spanish minor, he had no job offers, no next steps, and no particular direction beyond the vague assumption that he’d probably move back into his parents’ basement in Salt Lake City.

Then an email came.

“Brother Paul asked, ‘Who wants to live in Puerto Rico for a year?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’”

It was, as Quinn freely admits, “a selfish impulse.” He loved to travel. His dad had spent time in Puerto Rico in the 1950s, and the opportunity to trace his father’s steps felt serendipitous. But it was also something more. “If you go to St. John’s, you’re probably already drawn to volunteering,” Quinn said. “It’s just part of the place. You’re surrounded by people who are kind, community-minded, and interested in the world.”

Quinn Martin didn’t set out to be one of the first volunteers in the newly launched Benedictine Volunteer Corps. In fact, he insists he wasn’t a pioneer at all. “I thought we were just restarting something Brother Paul had done before. I didn’t feel like we were trailblazing anything.”

But that year in Humacao, Puerto Rico - blazing hot, filled with language and laughter and endless rain - would end up shaping the rest of his life.

A Year of Muddy Spanish

By the time he arrived in Puerto Rico, Quinn’s Spanish was already unusually strong. He had attended an immersion school in Maryland and spent a summer in Bolivia at age 11. “I pretty much conquered Spanish by age 10,” he says with a laugh. But even fluency has a shelf life. “Now I’ve got students from Mexico in my classroom, and I can barely say a word. The accent’s still there, but everything else - gone. If you don’t use it, it disappears.”

Though the school where he served wasn’t quite sure what to do with him—and he wasn’t sure either - Quinn found his footing in the sports programs, coaching where he could and pitching in around the monastery. He spent long nights soaking up the humid Puerto Rican air, listening to a cacophony of frogs and roosters. He relied on the monks for community and, occasionally, for the loan of their car. “That saved me,” he admits. “I’d drive into town just to find Americans to hang out with. I was probably the worst BVC volunteer in history.”

Still, something was happening beneath the surface. “I didn’t have a plan before I went,” he said. “And I didn’t really have a plan after. But I knew I didn’t want to go home. So I applied to grad school, kind of as a stalling tactic.”

He stumbled upon the PACE program - the Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education - based out of the University of Portland. The idea of getting a free master’s degree while teaching in under-resourced schools appealed to him. There was only one hitch: “I wasn’t Catholic.”

No problem. “I asked Brother Paul, ‘How do I become Catholic?’ And before I knew it, I was being baptized by Father Timothy Backous in the Abbey Church, surrounded by monks.”

Faith, Fate, and Film Interviews

The logistics of applying to grad school from Puerto Rico in 2003, pre-Zoom, pre-Facetime, pre-everything - posed a unique challenge. Quinn proposed filming his interview. The PACE team agreed.

He enlisted Brother Rudolph, a Puerto Rican monk with a thick accent, to read the questions off-camera. “We were in the library, and Rudolph is doing his best to pronounce these questions in English. I think that video interview - Brother Rudolph and all -endeared me to the program more than any answer I gave.”

He got in.

And just like that, another door opened, unplanned but providential.

A Life of Lucky Yeses

Today, Quinn Martin lives in Washington state with his wife and two young sons. He teaches English at Prosser High School, a small public school tucked into wine country in the southeastern corner of the state. He’s no longer fluent in Spanish. He’s not exactly sure how he became a teacher. And he’s quick to downplay any narrative of heroism.

“My life has been a series of incredibly lucky breaks,” he says. “Nothing I planned. Just a bunch of doors opening and me being naïve enough to walk through them.”

But if you ask him what he’d tell someone considering a year of service with the BVC, he doesn’t hesitate.

“Go for it. There’s no wrong way to do good. And when you serve with the Benedictines -whether you’re in New Jersey or Puerto Rico or Montserrat - you get to learn your worth outside of the St. John’s bubble. That’s where you really figure out who you are.”

Monks, Hurricanes, and Sylvia Cruz

When asked for a favorite memory, Quinn pauses. “It kind of all blurs together,” he says. But then he smiles.

“There’s a famous Puerto Rican singer named Sylvia Cruz - she’s the one who yells ‘Azúcar!’ The monks named their sugar tin after her. When she died, the whole country shut down. I’ll never forget that.”

Or the rain. “It rained for 26 straight days. Not drizzle. Torrential downpour. Day and night. I’d never seen anything like it - and I live in Washington.”

The solitude of that year made an impact, too. “I think I would’ve been a better volunteer if I’d had someone else there,” he reflects. “That sense of community matters. But even being alone, it was worth it.”

Full Circle

Quinn’s now more than 20 years removed from that year in Humacao. But the ripples of that experience remain. He sees them in his classroom. In the way he talks to students. In the way he continues to say “yes” to things he doesn’t entirely understand.

“None of this was part of the plan. But that’s the thing about the BVC - it’s not about the plan. It’s about showing up. It’s about saying yes. And if you do that, chances are something good is going to happen.”

And then, grinning: “Unless Brother Paul’s actually a shyster. But, come on - it’s hard not to trust a monk.”

Towering beige pillars of the Montserrat Mountains reach high into the sky and loom above Barcelona. The peaks reaching towards the heavens, claw at cloud clambering towards the Mediterranean Sea. Bells toll that familiar chime; it’s time to return to the blessings of life here in Montserrat. I climb down from my rocky perch near the greenhouse. I finish watering the plants I have grown familiar with here. Friends like Lavender remind me of the mountain meadows in my home of Colorado. New friends like Fig trees share their gifts of sunshine packed into sweet fruit. A sweetness that will always be reminiscent of the joy of Montserrat. I head to recreation with the Escolans (school children). Their joyful shouts echo through these mountain caverns and through the monastery halls. I think to myself, “do the monks ever get tired of hear their screeching?” It is an interesting juxtaposition to their stoic heavenly singing at mass and prayers; I digress. 

 After sashaying across the Abbey altar for graduation my eyes were set on a year of service in Montserrat, Spain. The Benedictine Volunteer Corp (BVC) sends a cohort of volunteers there every year, and I was blessed to be selected as one. Though on paper, a year seems long; today I would give anything to have just one more night atop that mountain. A year passed like sunrise to sunset and before I knew it, I was giving tearful goodbyes to the Escolans and monks. 

Each day I awoke to the sound of 45 Catalan kids running through the halls with complete dismay for the typical silence one assumes a monastery has. A day in my life there included teaching Arts, Science, English, and Physical Education, tending the gardens, maintaining the greenhouse, playing futbol (soccer), and a Question of the Day (a personal venture of mine). At various points of the day the kids would come up and earnestly ask for the question of the day. Questions would range from, ideal superpower to who is someone that inspires you? Tough questions for kids around seven to thirteen years old, and yet they always had an answer. Despite this starting as a simple feat of daily English practice, it soon turned into the best part of my day and a highlight of theirs. A shared practice of joy.

Although the BVC send each cohort out to enact a year of service, I felt that mine was a year of love. To be welcomed into a community and begin the weaving of relationships through the year was a mystical experience. Despite a language barrier, we came together to find common ground and discover ways to communicate. And just as things were becoming easy and I started speaking Catalan, the end of my time had come. The most difficult part of my year at Montserrat was the day of departure. I felt so loved by the community there, like the Mare de Deu de Montserrat herself had welcomed me into her arms with a loving embrace. Saying goodbye was by far the hardest feat I had to do. Though difficult, I look back on it as a beautiful lesson that heartbreak, in an instance like this, means you loved fully and were beloved wholistically.

Now, I write this letter home while in my second year of volunteering. Life here in Imiliwaha, Tanzania has similarities but is retains a splendid difference. Wind rustles the leaves of the avocado trees outside my window, as a cacophony of songbirds echo their chorus. Though much further from home than Montserrat, I still am able to find familiar friends in the pristine nature here. Gooseberry bushes dot the acreage of farmland, reminding me of of Minnesota. Gorgeous orchids peak their ornate heads above the grasslands reviving a spirit of appreciation that was born in Montserrat. 

Largemouth bass greedily snatch our fishing hooks as my fellow volunteer Courtney Hurias and I cheer for the dinner we have just caught. We know that the sisters at St. Gertrude’s Convent will congratulate us with a “Hongera!” and maybe even a little dance. Our home for the next six months is deep in the southern highlands of Tanzania. Verdant green hills roll as far as the eye can see. Winds wisp through the grass like hair as sweet tangy aromas of unknown flowers and fragrant plants kiss the nose. It’s a natural beauty incomparable to pictures.

A typical day here starts with mass with approximately 125 sisters joining their voices to sing Swahili hymns. Courtney and I help with the daily duties of mealtime and clean up at the guesthouse. We spend our morning helping at the orphanage, working at the candle shop, tending farmland, or chopping wood. In the afternoons, I teach English at St. Gertrude’s Secondary School for Girls. My class is Form 1, equivalent to the 9^th grade in the American school system. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I am greeted by my 63 students who are eager to start their English lesson with the ‘mzungu’ (Swahili word for anyone not African). 

Though my time here is far from ending, yet the days have developed a familiar rhythm. I know that these warm days here will soon come to a close, and the sisters will give us a heartfelt goodbye as we are shuttled away from this Tanzanian countryside. The lessons here have yet to be fully realized, but the value of sharing your gifts with the world is something that can’t be described in a short parable. Sometimes its taking that leap of faith, and trust your wings to help you soar.