A ‘Different Benedict is Here’: Benedict XVI and the New Missionary Age

In a subject dear to our hearts, the Holy Father is speaking about the Benedictine reform at the heart of his Papacy. Taking his cue from the great Benedictine House of Cluny, he traces its missionary importance as a great reforming movement aimed at carrying out the Great Commission.

It can and should be taken as a kind of manifesto and a call to men to consider an apostolic life in the Benedictine order energized by the great spirit of its founder at Nursia in the fifth Century.

This article by Deacon Keith Fournier understands that call and might serve to orient us prayerfully to pray for monks to lead us, as they always have, to lives of greater sanctity and Christian Hope.


The voices of those who wanted to place him in a terminological box have receded. This is a prophetic Pope with an inspired and historic mission that has only just begun.





Pope Benedict, like his namesake St. Benedict, has a vision for the Evangelization of Europe and the West. A 'different Benedict' is here and a new missionary age has begun.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - History shows that the earliest days of a Papacy often send a signal for the watchful observer. We are told by some to pay attention to the name chosen by the new Pope and the content of their first messages. I vividly recall the first days of our current Pope’s service to the Church and the world. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name Benedict. One of the young priests who commentated on this choice during the televised coverage of those extraordinary days noted that the new Pope had visited Subiaco before all the events even began. Subiaco is the home of the Benedictine monastic movement. It symbolizes the Christianization of Europe during the First Millennium.

Saint Benedict was born around the year 480 in Umbria, Italy. He is the father of Western Monasticism and co-patron of Europe (along with Saints Cyril and Methodius). As a young man, Benedict fled a decadent and declining Rome for further studies and deep prayer and reflection. He gave his life entirely to God as a son of the united Catholic Church. He traveled to Subiaco. That cave became his dwelling, the place where he communed deeply with God. It is now a shrine called "Sacro Speco" (The Holy Cave). It is still a sanctuary for pilgrims, including Pope Benedict XVI, who visited that very same place of prayer right before his election to the Chair of Peter.

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The new flowering of Cluny, auf Deutsch.