Basil Pennington

M. Basil Pennington O.C.S.O. (1931–2005) was an American Roman Catholic Trappist monk and priest. He was a leading spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, and director.

Pennington was an alumnus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum where he obtained a licentiate in Theology in 1959. He also earned a licentiate in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Pennington became known internationally as one of the major proponents of the Centering Prayer movement begun at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, during the 1970s.

Pennington's book Centering Prayer was first published in 1980, and had sold more than a million copies by 2002. Translations of this work have been published in Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian.

Life
Pennington entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance at St. Joseph's Abbey in June 1951. At St. Joseph's Abbey, he was appointed professor of theology in 1959, professor of canon law and professor of spirituality in 1963, and vocation director in 1978. In 2000, he was appointed superior at Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri, and later that same year he was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. He returned to St. Joseph's Abbey after retiring in 2002. He died on June 3, 2005, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, from injuries sustained from a car accident.

Bernard McGinn wrote that Pennington "not only wrote effectively about centering prayer, but he also traveled across the United States and the world spreading the practice through lectures and workshops. The renewal of contemplative prayer in the last decades of the twentieth century owes much to these efforts."

In Pennington's obituary, McGinn stated that "For those who never met Basil Pennington, reading the published form of the journal he kept during [a visit to Mount Athos ] will provide a good sense of the man in all his humanity and irrepressible goodwill."