Laurence Mancuso, 72, Leader of Dog-Training Monks

By STEPHEN MILLER, Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 27, 2007

The Reverend Laurence Mancuso, who died June 10 at 72, was the founding abbot of the Monks of New Skete, an order east of Saratoga Springs on a mountainside where a handful of Eastern Orthodox brothers live and pray, as well as raising some of the best-trained pedigreed German shepherds in the country.

Initially a Franciscan monk in a New Canaan, Conn., monastery that followed Byzantine traditions, Mancuso was ordained as a priest in 1960. Inspired by the liturgical liberalizations of the Second Vatican Council, he founded New Skete in 1966. (Skete is a word designating an Orthodox order of ascetics or hermits; the word finds its origin in old Egyptian Christianity.)

The order moved around several times before finding a home on a twin-topped mountain outside Cambridge, N.Y., where the brothers farmed and raised livestock, which they butchered and sold locally. They also built an exotic wooden chapel with gold onion domes.

"We wanted to look for real life, authentic life as opposed to superficial and phony," Mancuso told the Chicago Tribune in 1979. "Praying is one way of living life, but so is working and recreation." The Tribune article noted that Mancuso was cut out well to be the monastery's superior because of his "dominant and authoritarian" personality — ideal too for dog training.

Mancuso had liked German shepherds since he was a child in Utica, when he would play priest in the basement with Necco wafers. At New Skete, the monks had a beloved male German shepherd named Kyr. After he disappeared — he reportedly ran off with a pack of wild dogs — the brothers began raising more dogs as replacements. As word spread, waiting times for pups grew to years, and the monks wrote several books on dog training, including "How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend," "The Art of Raising a Puppy," and "I & Dog," which the order calls "a series of meditations on the spiritual dimensions of the dog-human relationship."

The cable TV channel Animal Planet features dog raising and training at the monastery in its current series "Divine Canine."

Initially affiliated with the Catholic diocese of Albany, New Skete in 1979 officially joined the Orthodox Church in America, a million-strong church with roots in Byzantine traditions.

Mancuso set about translating religious texts into modern English from Greek and Slavonic, and he reset old church choral music into smaller settings that could be handled by just a few monks. He also produced an English translation of the Psalms and a collection of sermons, "Notes From a Poor Monk."

The number of monks at New Skete has remained constant at about 10, but the institution has grown with the addition of nuns and married couples. In 1969, a group of nuns from an Indiana monastery settled nearby and became the Nuns of New Skete. Working at first in clerical or cleaning jobs, the nuns now support themselves by baking cheesecakes; they ship nationally and feature flavors such as Kahlua and raspberry ripple. A third order of married monastics, the Companions of New Skete, was founded in 1983. The Companions run a bed and breakfast.

Mancuso retired as abbot in 2000 and had been living at the home of his brother, Norman Mancuso, in Natick, Mass., at the time of his death, which came after a fall.

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