Draft:Bernard James Elmer Murphy

Bernard James Elmer Murphy (December 10, 1874 – February 18, 1942) was the first native Oregonian to be ordained a Catholic priest; he was the abbot of Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon for over twenty years.

Biography
He was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of James J. Murphy, originally of Boston, and Mary Fitzgerald, a native of Oregon. After graduating from high school in Portland, he entered Mt. Angel Abbey and received the name Bernard as his monk's name. He was sent to Rome for theological studies at the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm and ordained there by Cardinal Francesco di Paola Cassetta in 1898. No native of Oregon had become a priest before.

He returned to Oregon in 1900 and served in the seminary, whose director he became (1903–1906); he was then president of Mt. Angel College (1908–1910). Upon Abbot Placidus Fuerst's resignation in 1921, Murphy was made abbot administrator of the monastery and then elected abbot on October 26. Murphy's election came at a point when native-born Americans first achieved the majority among Mt. Angel's monks. The new abbot decided that candidates from Europe would only be accepted into the novitiate after at least a year of learning the English language and American customs. Also, the German-language prayerbooks the lay brothers had been using were replaced by English ones.

He went blind in 1932 and was assigned a coadjutor abbot, Thomas Meier, in 1934. Meier became his successor as abbot on February 18, 1942.

He was the first abbot who was born in the US and to speak English as his mother tongue. He travelled extensively during his studies and thereafter, visiting famous abbeys.

Abbey Fire
During his abbatiate, most of the abbey's buildings were completely destroyed by fire on September 21, 1926. Murphy had experienced the first fire at Mount Angel in 1892, as a student. The chapel, college, library, and school buildings that had been erected since then were in turn leveled by the 1926 fire.