You would be hard-pressed to find a workplace less likely to nurture a vocation as a Benedictine monk than ABC News.
But 32-year-old Rohan Viswalingam, who worked in the ABC’s Ultimo offices for a decade in news production, is now wearing the white habit of a Benedictine novice at the abbey of New Norcia, two hours northwest of Perth.
“The thought did occur to me that this would actually make a pretty good story, but I was ready to leave,” he told The Catholic Weekly in an exclusive interview. “So I finished my shift and handed in my pass at the front desk and then just walked out.”
What drew him from indifference and agnosticism to the Catholic Church and then to a vocation as a Benedictine?
There was nothing spiritual in his background to map out a path for his journey. Viswalingam’s father is a Malaysian Tamil and his mother is Dutch. They were—and are— respectful of Christianity as a force for civic good, but they are not believers.
He explained that as an arts student at Macquarie University and as a young professional he felt dejected and directionless. In a forgotten corner of the internet you can read his “nihilistic and romantic poetry” in a literary magazine.
There must be more to life than this, he thought. A friend at the ABC patiently answered his questions about Christianity. He started practicing Buddhist meditation. And then his father mentioned a retreat at New Norcia. “Oh, this looks interesting,” he said. “And I was like, I’ll just check it out. I had no idea that New Norcia existed.”
Named after the Italian birthplace of St Benedict, New Norcia was founded in 1848 by two Spanish monks. A small township has grown up around it, but the monks’ focus is fundamentally spiritual. “Above all, our life as monks is directed towards the contemplation of the eternal glory and splendour of God, and offering a witness of faith to the world,” says its website.
Benedictine monks take lifelong vows of obedience, “conversion of life” (which includes poverty and chastity), and stability. The latter means that the monks commit themselves to spending the rest of their lives in the same monastery. At its height early in the 1900s, New Norcia had about 40 monks. Today there are seven.
It’s an austere lifestyle which must be the antithesis of ABC News. But Viswalingam loved the retreat and started thinking about a vocation as a monk. There was just one small problem—he wasn’t a Catholic. So in 2021, he was baptised.
Unfortunately, he said, that didn’t kickstart a religious transformation. Instead, he lapsed into a lukewarmness, barely going to Mass on Sundays.
The next year, however, his friend inveigled him into attending an Opus Dei silent retreat for young professionals at Bargo, south of Sydney. And something extraordinary happened, which he still struggles to explain.
“We were doing the Stations of the Cross, and I was reading the ninth station, which is Christ falls for the third time on his way to Calvary. As I was reading, time suddenly felt like it was slowing down and it felt like my heart was sort of rupturing,” he said. “And I saw Christ on the ground with the cross over him. And it felt like I was in the scene. And it was happening at that moment.”
He felt compelled, reluctantly, to look at the face of Christ. “And then I heard a voice ask me, ‘are you going to take this seriously?’ I remember being pretty shocked, because that wasn’t my voice.”
After the retreat, his life changed. He began going to Mass daily and saying the Rosary. He joined a residential discernment program in 2023 in Wahroonga while still working at the ABC. “That was a superb year,” he said.
The final step toward New Norcia was a pilgrimage late last year to the Carmelite monastery in France where St Thérèse of Lisieux had lived. He stayed in the hermitage adjoining the monastery for a couple of weeks, thinking and praying.
Then came the capstone to his vocation.
At one particular moment, he remembers, “I felt as if God was popping the hood and working on the engine. I felt as if he’s this head physician of the hospital. And I felt this nurse was with me as well.”
“Who is this woman?” he asked himself. It was, of course, Mary, “an unmistakable, motherly, gentle, merciful, welcoming presence.” He had never understood why she was so important to Catholics, even though he had committed himself to saying the Rosary every day. But now he did.
So, on 24 March he put on the habit of a Benedictine novice. “From my first visit here I got a feeling of being at home and at peace that I’d never got anywhere else,” he said. “Finding home is probably one of the most important factors related to vocation.”
What’s the point of being a contemplative monk, The Catholic Weekly asked Viswalingam.
Ora et labora, prayer and work, is the Benedictine motto, but the prayer takes place in an isolated monastery and the work is menial and unpaid. At the moment, the former ABC journalist is raking lawns, weeding garden beds, and cleaning the heritage buildings at his monastery. Ora et labora is not a Gen Z slogan.
Family and friends urged him to at least become a diocesan priest.
But he didn’t feel called to that. “No, I’m going to walk away radically from everything and reserve my yes for Christ in Christ alone.”
It was an unconventional choice, but a deeply pondered one.
“Modern people assume that if you’re going to become a monk in a monastery, you’re probably a weirdo or a loser or a failure, or you’re running away from certain responsibilities,” he said. But that’s not the case.
“I think part of my conversion is finding modern life very unserious, very frivolous, very shallow and very non-committal. Everyone’s about, I’ve got to keep my options open. I don’t want to be tied down, because I’ll be miserable, and I’ve got to be able to do whatever I want at whatever time possible.
“And joining a monastery basically, is the exact opposite.”
The vocations director for New Norcia, Fr Robert Nixon OSB, detects a burgeoning interest in Benedictine spirituality.
“We have a steady stream of vocational enquiries,” he said in an email. “People who are interested in exploring the Benedictine vocation are always welcome to spend some time living at the monastery and following the monastic way of life.”
So from now on, will it all be smooth sailing after Viswalingam’s turbulent early life? Probably not, he said.
“Just because you’re in a monastery, there’s no guarantee that you have a clean run to heaven. You know, if we’re sinners, you’ll find something to sin about,” he says.
“Every Catholic is fighting a war. We’re all in a spiritual battle. And if you’re in a monastery, you’re on an outpost, like behind enemy lines, or you’re on a long-range recon patrol. And I presume that spiritually, the devil doesn’t like that at all, so he attacks you even more.”
What advice does Rohan Viswalingam, now known as Dom Anthony OSB to his fellow Benedictines (after St Anthony, the 4th century father of monasticism) have for young people who are searching for their vocation?
“Let God make the first move,” he says. “Pray and be still and be humble. And God will come into that stillness, and then he will slowly direct you like a shepherd along the way.”