Hildebrand Gregori

Who was Hildebrand Gregori?

The Venerable Hildebrand Gregori, O.S.B. Silv., was a Benedictine monk, who served as the Abbot General of the Sylvestrine congregation of the Order. He was born Alfredo Gregori in Poggio Ginolfo, part of the town of Carsoli in the province of L'Aquila, Italy, and died at the congregation's abbey in Rome.

The abbot was moved at the plight of the many orphans and street children he saw in Rome in the years after World War II. He began to take the young boys into his own monastery to help them, but he envisioned a community of Religious Sisters who would undertake this task. In 1950, he formed the "Prayerful Sodality" which in 1977 became the Pontifical Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of the Reparation of the Holy Face. Abbot Hildebrand directed his spiritual daughters to the "charism of reparation," understood as an act of love against the "sin of social injustice," in reference to the Holy Face of Jesus. Currently the Sisters have 14 communities in Italy, one in Poland, one in Romania, two in India, and one in Congo.

On September 27, 2000 the 50th anniversary of the religious congregation he founded, Gregori was honored by an official letter from Pope John Paul II to Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini.