As the Benedictine Volunteer Corps prepares to send out its 2026–2027 chapter, we also welcome a familiar face into a new leadership role. Wes Kirchner ’24 has begun his work as the new Assistant Director of the BVC, bringing with him a deep love for Saint John’s and firsthand experience of the very journey he will now help others begin.

After graduating from Saint John’s in 2024, Wes served as a Benedictine Volunteer in Kenya and Israel. That experience will now shape the way Wes accompanies future volunteers as they prepare to leave Collegeville and enter communities across the world.

Following his BVC year, Wes returned to campus to serve in the Saint John’s Prep dorm hall, where he continued the important work of walking with young people through daily life. Now, as Assistant Director of the BVC and Faculty Resident in Vincent Court, Wes will continue serving Saint John’s through mentorship, presence, and pastoral care.

This summer also marks the beginning of a new journey for the 2026–2027 Benedictine Volunteers. After completing their formation retreat on May 31, this group of Johnnies is preparing to serve for the next year in Benedictine communities far from Saint John’s, but closely connected to its mission.

Max Winter will serve in Spain; Gilbert Torvinen and Alex Schmitz in Italy; Cormac O’Connor and Allan Chu in Tanzania; Isak Brandt and Joe Mechels in Rwanda; Robert Adderley and Murphy Setter in Newark; and Aiden Blaeser, Clay Megaw, Sam Mancino, and Joshua Anderson in both Xela and Esquipulas, Guatemala.

Their year will ask much of them: patience, humility, flexibility, and a willingness to be changed by the people and places they encounter. They will serve in schools, monasteries, local communities, and ministries shaped by the Benedictine tradition. More than anything, they will be invited to show up fully, to listen before speaking, to learn before assuming, and to discover how service often transforms the one who serves.

As Wes begins his new role and this new chapter of volunteers prepares to depart, the BVC gives thanks for the many hands, hearts, and communities that continue to make this work possible. The road ahead is full of unknowns, but it is also full of grace. We send this group forward with hope and confidence in the good work that awaits them.

Before the Benedictine Volunteer Corps sends its volunteers across the world, it first asks them to slow down.

For two weeks this May, the newest BVC cohort gathered at Saint John’s Abbey and University for the program’s annual formation retreat, a stretch of days shaped by prayer, manual work, shared meals, classroom reflection, and the quiet discipline of community life. The days followed a deliberately Benedictine pattern. Volunteers prayed with the monastic community, worked alongside Abbey and campus partners, met with monks and mentors, and entered conversations on the Rule of Saint Benedict, culture, leadership, prayer, simplicity, and service. They spent mornings in places such as the Abbey woodshop, cemetery, Arboretum, custodial services, Saint John’s Prep, and other corners of campus where ordinary labor becomes a form of belonging to the greater Saint John’s ecosystem. In the evenings, they gathered for conversation, recreation, and the slow work of becoming a community.

By the end of the retreat, fourteen men stood ready to be sent to BVC sites in Spain, Italy, Guatemala, Newark, Tanzania, and Rwanda. The retreat was, in many ways, a beginning hidden inside a farewell. In a few weeks, these volunteers will scatter across the globe. But for two weeks in Collegeville, they practiced the first lesson of the Benedictine Volunteer Corps: before one can be sent, one must first be formed.

Written by Ethan Riddle ‘25

It’s strange to be an American abroad these days. Being in Spain, and recently having been in Mexico, there is an unspoken question on everyone’s face as soon as I introduce myself. They’re wondering if I support what my nation’s president is doing at home and across the world. There is a palpable sense of relief when they find out I don’t, and they know they can be honest with me about how scared, concerned, or angry they are with the USA’s belligerent behavior abroad and its fascistic turn at home. If you don’t believe me on the fascistic turn, all I can ask is that you consider reading the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco’s essay UrFascism and decide for yourself.

At my site near Barcelona, Spain, the memory of political division and violence is omnipresent. In Terrassa, one of the old government buildings still has bullet holes in its stone facade from Francoist troops. In Barcelona’s old town, you can see the pockmarks in the walls of the Church of St. Philip Neri, the namesake himself an advocate against war, from the bombing of a temporary orphanage. All over the Abbey of Montserrat, there are artistic portrayals and written references to the 23 monks martyred during the war.  In the first-floor hall of the Escolania, where I work every day, there are photos of the choir school’s class from every year since photography first arrived in the region. The photos from 1936 to 1939 are conspicuously absent, instead replaced by a couple sentences in the regional Catalan language explaining that school was suspended due to civil war.

During those years, the nation of Spain was split in a horrific conflict brought about by economic disparities, wide swings in governance, and a coup d’etat. By the end, somewhere between 280,000 and 500,000 people were dead and the fascist-monarchist Francoists had won. The following regime, led by Francisco Franco, emphasized a Spanish identity that pushed anyone outside of Franco’s definition to the margins. Women lost the right to vote and those deemed “immoral” were placed in centers wherein they were routinely abused. Homosexuality was outlawed, and those convicted were sent to concentration camps along with an assortment of former opposition soldiers, left-wing political activists, and the poor.

Since Franco’s death in 1975, Spain has been striving towards the growth, prosperity, and freedom that his regime held them back from. With the 1977 Pact of Forgetting and the new constitution in 1978, the country agreed to move on from the days of Francoist Spain and towards a brighter future. They have since been governed mostly by the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE). The current Prime Minister is Pedro Sanchez.

Sanchez may be a familiar name for those of us who have been following the American-Israeli war against Iran. Spain’s leader has been a leader in opposition against the participation of European nations in the war, an example now followed by Italy and others. Considering Spain’s history, Sanchez’ anti-war position is no surprise. With war and dictatorship in the recent national memory, the Spanish people know well what the people of the United States are facing. More than once here, I’ve been proud to say I come from Minnesota, where the people took to the streets to oppose ICE raids against their neighbors with some paying the ultimate price.

Even while our countries’ respective leaders are in dispute, I have never stopped feeling welcome here. While it can be strange to hear opinions on my country’s politics coming from the mouths of foreign choirboys, it is heartening to hear from the up-and-coming generation that they’re already thinking about how to make the world a better place. Between class, choir rehearsal, and recreation time, these kids are paying attention.

I know we’re all tired of hearing it, but the world only seems to grow more chaotic by the day. However, in the halls and classrooms, in the cloister and the basilica, and on the mountain trails of Montserrat, I can find the bright spots in the daily rhythm of my volunteer year.