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Ed. The following appeared in The Hebrew Catholic #75 Summer Fall 2001. Shortly before we mailed our last issue, #74, we learned that Br. Anthony was terminally ill. Then, just as we were getting ready to begin our move to Michigan, Colleen Hasler called to let us know that Brother had returned to the Lord. Subsequently, she sent the following letter and the brief biography that follows. We are grateful and blessed to have known Brother Anthony in this life and look forward to meeting him again. We pray for the repose of the soul of this humble servant who loved the Lord, the Church, and the Jewish people. Brother Anthony Maria Opisso, M.D. - R.I.P.
Brother Anthony traveled to the United States and worked various jobs to pay his way through his university studies. He continued and concluded his medical studies at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, where he graduated as a Physician in 1950. Upon graduation, Dr. Anthony Opisso served as a Physician and Surgeon in the US Army during the Korean War. After his military service, Dr. Opisso settled in Columbia Falls, Montana, where he developed a large, successful practice. His diagnostic skills became well known in the area and patients traveled to see him from as far as five hundred miles. No one was ever turned away, regardless of his or her ability to pay. Discerning a religious calling to serve God as a monk or hermit, Dr. Opisso sold the ranch where he lived in Montana and closed his practice. Before entering a life of prayer and solitude he decided to spend time serving the poor as a doctor in the Third World. While awaiting his appointment to serve as a medical missionary, he became Chief of Outpatient Services at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah for the Army Personnel Services. Then he went to Dominica, West Indies, where he worked for two years in the service of the poor. There were times when Dr. Opisso worked sixteen-hour days and saw as many as four hundred and fifty patients. On occasion his medical practice necessitated that he travel by horseback or through dense woods to get to his patients. In the fall of 1962, Dr. Opisso moved on to Africa where he did medical work for the poor at the Benedictine Hospital in Nongoma, S. A. (Zululand). In 1964, Dr. Opisso became Brother Anthony when he joined the ‘Hermits of Saint John the Baptist,’ a small society of hermits founded by Dom J. Winandy O.S.B., the renowned monastic scholar and abbot emeritus of Clairvaux Abbey in Luxembourg. For a time the hermits lived in the mountains on the island of Martinique but moved on to British Columbia in search of greater solitude. On September 22, 1965, Brother Anthony made his profession as a Lay (Third Order) Discalced Carmelite. When Dom Winandy was recalled to his Abbey, the hermits disbanded and, while waiting to find another hermitage, Brother Anthony lived as a recluse in Ireland where he wrote the first of five books. He returned to Canada and lived with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. On September 7, 1970, while staying with them in Ottawa, Brother Anthony was made an ‘Honorary Oblate,’ the second doctor to receive this honour. In the fall of 1971, Brother Anthony transferred his hermit obedience to Dom Alphonse Arsenault, the Abbot of Notre Dame du Calvaire Cistercian Abbey (Trappist) in Rogersville, New Brunswick, where he lived as a Lay Carmelite hermit for over thirty years until his death. In his hermit life, Brother Anthony became a biblical as well as a Rabbinic scholar, mastering Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, and demonstrating in his writings an unparalleled mastery of Jewish and Christian sources. The depth of his scriptural understanding impressed scholars of both the Jewish and the Christian tradition. His five books and many articles are loved by devout readers around the world. Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter of Temple University wrote,
Brother Anthony is survived by one brother Francis Opisso, of Ottawa, and two sisters, Anna Maria Calder in Hollywood, Florida, and Maria C. Garcia of Vigo, Spain; along with many cousins, nieces, nephews and godchildren all around the world. Brother Anthony is mourned also by the Trappist monks of Rogersville as well as by many friends who knew him and loved him dearly. The body [lay] in state at Notre Dame du Calvaire Cistercian Abbey, Saturday, June 16. The Funeral Mass [was] held on Tuesday, June 19, at 3 pm, at the Monastery chapel in Rogersville, followed by Christian burial at the Abbey. (In lieu of flowers), donations toward a wheelchair lift for the Abbey guesthouse may be made in his memory to Les Peres Trappistes | ||
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Brother Anthony Maria Opisso, MD, 1923-2001, passed away on June 15, 2001, at the Palliative Care Unit of the Saint John Regional Hospital after an illness. Brother Anthony was born in Manila, Philippines, on january 15, 1923. He was the son of Antonio Opisso and Josefina Aguado. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, Brother Anthony underwent torture. In his early twenties, he joined a US Army unit in the struggle to liberate the Philippines. In honor of this military service in World War II, President Truman offered Brother Anthony American citizenship.