Fraternal visits and monastic exchanges

Besides the numerous monks and nuns who came for the Liturgical and the Orthodox conferences, we have had among us in recent months: fr Timothy Wright, Benedictine monk of the English Ampleforth Abbey, at the end of his term as councilor to the abbot primate for relations with Islam; fr Pierre-François de Béthune, Benedictine monk of Clerlande (Belgium); br Matteo of the Camaldoli monastery; eight Benedictine monks from the Hungarian abbey of Pannonhalma, among them br Iako and br Imre, whom we already knew; three Poor Clares from the monastery of Sant’Agata Feltria; m. Laura and sr Eleonora from the Carmel of Sassuolo; br Brice, Benedictine monk of Abu-Gosh (Israel); fr Giulio Pagnoni, Benedictine of Santa Giustina in Padua; fr William Skudlarek, American Benedictine of the Fujimi priory (Japan), secretary general of the Inter-religious monastic dialogue; br Jean-Paul and three other Cistercian monks of Hauterive (Switzerland); fr François Cassingena-Trévedy, Benedictine of Saint-Martin de Ligugé (France); fr Michel van Parys, retired abbot of Chevetogne, recently named igumen of the Santa Maria di Grottaferrata abbey, who in November held some talks for the community on “Authority and obedience in following Christ”.

Several of us have spent some days of retreat and of exchange at other monastic communities. In mid-June sr Lara took part in a one-week ecumenical monastic pilgrimage in Serbia, visiting the women’s monasteries of Ži?a, Ka?, Kaleni?, and Gradac and the men’s monasteries of Studenica and Kovilj, in addition to the patriarchate in Belgrade, where they were able to meet patriarch Irinej and a friend of our community, bishop Andrej of Remesiana. Sr Lara then in October spent a week with the Benedictine nuns of San Giulio d’Orta for iconographic collaboration. Sr Sylvie traveled to the Reformed Protestant community of Grandchamp in Switzerland for the profession of two new sisters. Sr Raffaela gave a course on reading the Psalms in Hebrew to the community and guests of the Benedictine monastery of Praille in France. Br Vincenzo made a week-long retreat at the Benedictine community of Dumenza.