Abbot Notker Wolf, the abbot primate of the Order of St. Benedict from 2000 to 2016, died on April 2 at the age of 84. From 1977 to 2000, he was archabbot of St. Ottilien Archabbey in Germany.
The prelate, who played the flute and the electric guitar, was the author of Aging Starts in Your Mind, Evil: How Our Culture is Going Off the Rails, and The Art of Leadership. He once said that “I think only when we have resolved that problem [clericalism], we can start to speak about women’s ordination. Because it would be horrible if we start clericalism even among women.”