William Dunstan Penley died after a brief illness. He was living in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, where he had resided for almost fifteen years. Fr Dunstan was born on February 19, 1909 in Greenwood Maine, and grew up in the state of Maine. He was, as a young man, received into the Catholic Church, and later entered the small beginning community at Portsmouth. He made his novitiate at Fort Augustus and, having returned to Portsmouth, was ordained a priest on May 22, 1937. Fr Dunstan received a Master’s degree from the Catholic University in Washington DC. He had a remarkable linguistic gift and could converse easily in most European languages.
Having taught at the school at Portsmouth, received an appointment in teaching modern languages at Xavier University in Canada, of which country he had become a citizen in the 1960s and where he was receiving medical attention for various illnesses that had come upon him over the years. In 1979, he returned to Portsmouth in an attempt to resume community life. His infirmities, however, made a return to Canada desirable, and he found an agreeable situation in Ontario where both his living accommodations and medical needs were taken care of more than adequately.
His funeral Mass was at Portsmouth and he was buried, as he had wished to be, in the Abbey cemetary.