“When a monk gives his life to God, he has to express that in a physical way, not just an intellectual way, and singing involves the whole body and the mind and the soul, and so it’s a wonderful way of keeping this relationship between God and the monk,” says Father Cassian, prior of the Benedictine monastic community in Norcia, Italy that was damaged extensively in Central Italy’s recent earthquake. More →

September 2, 2016

“We’re here as a sign of God’s presence,” says Father Edwin Leahy, headmaster of St. Benedict’s Prep School in Newark, New Jersey. “That’s who we are as monks. We take a vow of stability of place, so even though the neighborhoods change around us on a regular basis, we stay.” More →

June 10, 2016

“With the death of Thomas Merton, we lost really one of the great Catholic voices, one of the great prophetic figures within the Catholic Church. And I think that’s why his books are still selling, why they’re still being translated because that message is as relevant today as when he wrote it,” says Dr. Paul Pearson who oversees the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. More →

January 30, 2015

“Our purpose is to present the most humane, spiritual, moral, communal model of life for a world in chaos around us—to be an island of care and cohesion in the midst of all the movement.” More →

August 30, 2013

“The world does really hunger for community and that is something that Benedictine spirituality has to offer. It is what Benedict did that was different. He created communities of people, brought people together to live this life in common.” More →

August 30, 2013

Read an excerpt from R&E correspondent Judy Valente’s new book about Mount St. Scholastica monastery in Kansas. More →

August 30, 2013

Economic prosperity and modernity are beginning to have an impact on religious life in Thailand, a country that is 95 percent Buddhist but that in the last 30 years has seen the number of Buddhist monks decrease by about half. More →

May 24, 2013

“We are together in front of God and recognize each other as believers…these Muslim, Christian and Jewish, they worship God in a kind of choir,” Father Paolo Dall’Oglio told correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro in describing the work of his monastery before violence erupted in Syria. More →

July 20, 2012

“I am a human being, I’m a Buddhist monk, I am a Westerner,” says this sophisticated photographer, and the Dalai Lama has also asked him to lead one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most important monasteries. More →

June 15, 2012

“The message is that the Buddha is within and moving about in very mysterious ways,” says James Ulak, senior curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries. More →

May 11, 2012