A Conversion Story

"Tattoo artist Bobby Love had no clue he would some day become a Benedictine monk and an iconographer.

"''Who's this monk that has the tattoos? What's his story?' people ask,' Benedictine Father Odo Recker, Mount Angel Abbey's vocations director, remarked.

"Love made his final profession as a Benedictine monk at Mount Angel Abbey in Saint Benedict, Ore., last September, after five years of monastic formation. He's now Brother André Love, named after St. André Bessette. 'Hey, I'm just one of the monks here, nothing special,' he says in frustration over being singled out for something skin deep. Riding his BMW motorcycle, the leather-clad Love cut a novel figure in a community of clean-cut monks and seminarians with his pierced ears, dreadlocks and tattoos.

"'He was well on his way by the time he came here. His application to the monastery simply authenticated his desire for God and his ability to enter and live in a monastic context,' Father Recker said."

To read a National Catholic Register profile of Brother André, please visit:

National Catholic Register: From Tattoo Artist to Iconographer (2 MAR 15)

Background information:

Mount Angel Abbey