Jonathan Perry
From his office in Santiago, Jonathan Perry can see the distant snowcaps of the Andes and, closer at hand, the hill from which his Catholic community, the Manquehue movement, takes its name. Manquehue means ‘place of the condor.’
Sixteen years ago, Jonathan, a Cambridge Blue, abandoned a promising career in industry to come to Chile and make a lifetime commitment to the community and its Benedictine principles. Today he lives as a celibate and works as General Secretary to the movement. He is based at Colegio San Benito, one of a number of the schools, centres and retreats the Manquehue movement has established in the Santiago area and elsewhere in Chile.
How did his life come to take such a dramatic turn? ‘I was very sporty and did well academically and socially at Ampleforth,’ he begins. ‘I only paid lip service to the religious aspect so I could get on with the other things I wanted to do. I was set on being an achiever.’ From Ampleforth Jonathan went on to Cambridge where, again, religion played little part in his life. He read history and represented the university at cricket two years running, both times in the company of Mike Atherton. Then he joined BP as a graduate trainee. ‘It was another achievement,’ he explains. ‘I’d been to the best university. Now I wanted the perfect job, the ideal girl, the nice car. I was looking for success and the good life, like so many others of my generation.’
But then Jonathan started to question his desire for this material success. He began to read the philosophers and religious thinkers. Still in touch with the monks at Ampleforth, he was invited back on a retreat, where someone suggested he join a meditation group in London. He went along feeling nervous and sceptical but found ‘a bunch of normal people, doing normal things, asking questions, just like me.’ And there he met José Manuel Eguiguren, the founder of the Manquehue movement.
One thing led to another and in 1991 Jonathan found himself on retreat in Patagonia with José Manuel and his family. BP had generously offered him a two-year sabbatical but, within a short while, he had become completely involved in the life of the community in Santiago. ‘I simply loved it,’ he says. ‘I realised I’d discovered a vocation that I’d just never bargained for. Community and the voice of Christ in scripture changed my way of looking at life. It was as if a time bomb had been ticking away, a time bomb that Ampleforth had helped plant.’
Looking back now, he sees that ‘while I was largely deaf to the attempts made by the monks to convey their faith to me, I did leave Ampleforth with an awareness of God being a serious possibility, and of happiness not being bound up with material success and the most comfortable possible lifestyle.’
Today Jonathan visits Ampleforth once a year, partly for the pleasure of maintaining old friendships, partly in his role as supervisor to the seven Chilean undergraduates the Manquehue movement sends there for one term each year. ‘It’s a haven,’ he reflects, ‘a place where the faces are familiar, a place of stability. Ampleforth is simply always there.’