His father and maternal grandfather, Sir John Roper Parkington, were champagne shippers, the family all speaking fluent French.
In 1927 he matriculated at Oxford to study modern languages (French and Spanish) at the university's Benedictine foundation, St Benet's Hall.
[1] Columba left in 1968 for East Africa to conduct spiritual retreats and inquire about establishing a monastic foundation in that region.
In 1972, he was "loaned" (as his Ampleforth obituary describes it),[2] to the Benedictines of Glenstal Abbey in Ireland, to help establish a monastery in Eke, Nigeria, in 1974, where he served as Prior beginning in 1975.
In his later years, he returned to Ampleforth, but made ecumenical and spiritual renewal visits to Catholic communities and clerical establishments in the Philippines, Australia, India, and Chile.