Photo: Main facade of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, cropped | By Alvesgaspar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 | link |
On 8 July 2019, Pope Francis appointed several new religious Members to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Among the new Members appointed to the Vatican congregation is Abbot President Guillermo León Arboleda Tamayo OSB of the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation.
Abbot President Guillermo was born in 1956. In 1991, he was elected as Conventual Prior of Santa María de la Epifanía (Guatapè), Rionegro-Antioquia, Colombia, and then became the community’s first abbot in 1999. In 2014, he became administrator of the Abbey of Santa Maria of Medellin, before being postulated as the community’s abbot.
On 22 September 2016, the General Chapter of the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation elected Abbot Guillermo León Arboleda Tamayo OSB, abbot of the Abbey of Santa Maria of Medellin and Administrator of Guatapè, to be its new Abbot President. He succeeded Abbot Bruno Marin OSB, who had served as Abbot President of the Congregation since 2004.
Abbot Guillermo is the first Abbot President of the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation to hail from the Americas.