Biography
Otmar was educated at the episcopal center of Chur and ordained a priest. In 719 he was called to restore the community that had grown around Gall’s hermitage and tomb. Under his leadership it became an ordered monastery and adopted the Rule of St. Benedict around 747.
His monastic reform was inseparable from mercy. The diocesan history remembers lodging for the poor and a hospital for people with leprosy, among the earliest known on the territory of modern Switzerland. Political conflict with Frankish nobles led to a false accusation, imprisonment, and exile.
Otmar died on the island of Werd on November 16, 759. His remains were brought back to St. Gall in 769, and his cult joined him permanently with Gall as one of the monastery’s two founding fathers.
How to read this pilgrimage
At St. Gallen, let Otmar connect the monastery’s intellectual beauty to hospitality, nursing, justice, and the poor. Venerate his memory without separating Benedictine learning from Benedictine service.
St. Otmar, pray for us.