28 St. Benedict of Nursia

St. Benedict of Nursia

Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, is also the patron of my pontificate. I begin with words that St. Gregory the Great wrote about St. Benedict: “The man of God who shone on this earth among so many miracles was just as brilliant in the eloquent exposition of his teaching” (cf. Dialogues 2, 36). The great pope wrote these words in 592. The holy monk, who had died barely fifty years earlier, lived on in people’s memories and especially in the flourishing religious order he had founded…

Taken from Great Christian Thinkers by Pope Benedict XVI