150 years after his birth in rural Germany, Buckfast Abbey’s choristers are paying a visit to the birthplace of Abbot Anscar Vonier, the man who oversaw the construction of the modern Abbey and boldly restored Buckfast as a site of monastic prayer after centuries of abandonment following its dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII.

In his teens, Anscar Vonier felt the call to serve God as a monk and moved from a small town in Swabia, in South-West Germany, to join a fledgling community in Buckfast. Over a couple of decades at the turn of the twentieth century, some 30 other young men came from this same region of Germany alongside Abbot Vonier, notably Brother Adam, famous for his cultivation of the Buckfast Bee, and the numerous monks who later constructed the current Abbey buildings.

2025 sees the 150th anniversary of Vonier’s birth in 1875, and to mark the occasion a group of the Abbey’s own choristers – children aged between 8 and 13 who are drawn from local schools in Devon – are returning to Swabia to sing, giving voice to the praise of God, but also honouring a powerful legacy and the connection between Buckfast and this region of Germany.

Abbot David Charlesworth, the current Abbot of Buckfast, commented: “Abbot Vonier lived a life inspired by faith and hope in Christ, given physical form through the construction of our fine church. Now, in a Jubilee year centred on being ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ it is fitting that our own choristers embark on their own journey to reconnect the Abbey with the land from where so many young men set out to follow Christ.”

The Abbey Choristers travel to Germany in July and are to sing in Abbot Vonier’s birthplace, a nearby former Benedictine monastery, and a local pilgrimage shrine.