[1] He was educated at Finchley Catholic Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1972, promoted to MA in 1975.
[3] In that year he was the University Lightfoot Scholar and graduated Ph.D. from Cambridge with a dissertation on refugees in the French Revolution.
[4] Bellenger taught history at Downside School as a lay master between 1978 and 1982, and made solemn vows in 1986.
In 2010, as Abbot of Downside, Bellenger said of the abbey: The main ways in which the monks of the Downside community work to spread the Gospel are through the witness of our life and our prayer, through education, especially in the school which we run, and through serving in the parishes which have been entrusted to our care... We monks are trying to listen to what God is saying to us.
[7]Bellenger was monastic editor of The Downside Review for the year 2017–2018, and in 2018 The Tablet published an article by him on Buckfast Abbey.