Marian Eleganti

Eugen Eleganti was born in Uznach, Canton of St. Gallen, on 7 April 1955, the second of four children to the contractor Eugen Eleganti and Irma Egli. He attended the Benedictine Einsiedeln seminary from 1967, where he completed his studies in 1974. He joined the Benedictines at the monastery of Einsiedeln in 1975, taking the name "David".

Later that year, Eleganti resigned from the monastery and joined a recently [1972] started group in Innsbruck, Austria, under the leadership of the Austrian priest Joseph Seidnitzer who had been gathering a community of young men and women geared towards the priesthood and the consecrated life.^[1] Eleganti continued his education, studying Catholic Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University. In 1978, alongside Gebhard Maria Sigl, he took over leadership duties for the above said community in Innsbruck, due to - as it turned out - the suspension 'a Divinis' of Fr. Seidnitzer. Eleganti left the community in 1990, entering the Abbey of the Missionary Benedictines in St. Otmarsberg in Uznach, where he assumed the religious name "Marian". In 1994 he finished his studies of theology in Salzburg. On 16 November 1994, Eleganti was ordained a Deacon by Bishop Otmar Mäder, and received his ordination on 23 June 1995 by the Bishop of St. Gallen, Ivo Fürer. In 2003, Eleganti completed a Doctorate of Theology at the University of Salzburg, on Romano Guardini's concept of truth.^[2]

On 15 July 1999, the monks of St. Otmarsberg Abbey elected Eleganti as the monastery's second abbot, succeeding Ivo Auf der Maur, receiving his Benediction by Bishop Ivo Fürer on 29 August 1999. The Missionary Benedictines in Uznach belong to the Benedictine Congregation of St. Ottilien near Munich with branches in Europe, East, West and South Africa, South America, Cuba and the United States, India, Korea, China, Kazakhstan and the Philippines.