MONKS AND BROTHERS KNOW NOTHING OF ELECTION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29368, 22 November 1960, Page 26

MONKS AND BROTHERS KNOW NOTHING OF ELECTION

"The Press” Special Service

HASTINGS, November 21.

There is a community of 26 people in New Zealand which, when the election campaign ends on Friday will not have heard or read one word of political propaganda. The members of this group are the monks and lay brothers of the Cistercian monastery at Kopua, southernmost point of tlje Hawke’s Bay electorate.. Apart from the Father Superior, and the guestmaster, who meet visitors and conduct the monastery’s business affairs, the monks have no intercourse with the outside world. They do not see newspapers or magazines, and have no radios. The Cistercians observe the rule of external silence, conversing by means of sign language and using their voices only to sing the Gregorian chants which are a feature of their enclosed order.

They will not vote on November 26. The mo£ks do know that an election is to be held, but have no knowledge of parties or candidates.

As required by law recehtly, those eligible to vote were enrolled by cards posted to the monastery. "No doubt, if important circumstances arose in which the interests of our order were involved we would vote by direction of the church,” said a spokesman for the monastery. “Butnormally, as an enclosed religious order, we do not vote.’*