Bernard Orchard

Dom Bernard Orchard OSB MA (3 May 1910 – 28 November 2006) was an English Roman Catholic Benedictine monk, headmaster and biblical scholar.

John Archibald Henslowe Orchard, the son of a farmer, was born in Bromley, Kent. He was educated at Ealing Priory School (to which he would in later life return as headmaster), and on leaving in 1927 became its first pupil since foundation in 1902 to go to university, winning a place at Fitzwilliam House, in the University of Cambridge, where he read History and Economics. At Ealing Priory he shared classes with Reginald C. Fuller with whom he would in later life collaborate on scholarly projects.

After graduating Orchard taught initially at a preparatory school before in 1932 taking the monastic habit at Downside Abbey, adopting the name Bernard; he was subsequently ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1939. At Downside he both taught at the school, took the role of choirmaster and began his career as a biblical scholar under the tutelage of Abbots John Chapman and Christopher Butler. From 1943 he took advantage of Divino afflante Spiritu, the papal encyclical of Pope Pius XII, which for the first time permitted modern methods of biblical criticism to be employed by Catholics, to embark upon A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, eventually published in 1951.

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