The one people” “

“Messenger of peace, promoter of union, master of civilization, and especially herald of the religion of Christ and founder of monastic life in the West”: these are the titles with which Paul VI, in his Brief “Pacis nuntius” of 24 October 1964, praised St. Benedict and hailed him as Patron of Europe. Benedict, writes Paul VI, brought “Christian progress with the cross, with the book and with the plough to the populations scattered from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, from Ireland to the plains of Poland… It was thus that he forged spiritual unity in Europe by virtue of which peoples divided on the linguistic, ethnic and cultural level felt that they formed the one people of God”. The ceremony of proclamation took place on 24 October 1964, on the occasion of the re-consecration of the abbey of Montecassino bombarded and destroyed during the Second World War. An eyewitness of that solemn ceremony was Father Notker Wolf , now abbot primate of the Benedictines, of whom we publish the following recollection. On 24 October 1964 Paul VI proclaimed St. Benedict Patron of Europe. When St. Benedict founded the monastery of Montecassino, he could scarcely have thought that his experience could form the roots of the future Europe. He wrote a Rule for the monks based on the Gospel and on the spiritual experience matured in Egypt, Syria, France, Italy and North Africa in the two centuries that had preceded him. His monks, following in his footsteps and enacting his principles, then contributed to the cultural development that led to modern Europe, through their monasteries that gradually proliferated throughout the West. They preached the Gospel, transformed uncultivated and forested regions into fertile farming areas, and increased the necessary production to feed the people; by their writings and their schools they contributed to the synthesis between Christian faith and the ancient tradition. In a less exterior and deeper sense St. Benedict especially laid the foundations for the respect of man. There is, in his Rule, no difference of provenance, neither social nor ethnic, because, citing St. Paul, “ God shows no partiality” (Rm 2:11; RB 2,20). The consciousness, prophetic for those times, of the dignity of the individual person with which God created each man and woman, urged St. Benedict not only to respect but to serve his brothers. To do justice to each individual, he rejected every ideology and became expert in that attitude of discretion, – “ mother of virtues” – that made him capable of great sympathy with everyone. St. Benedict, formed by the Gospel, laid the foundations for the humanism and respect of the human being that is a characteristic feature of the Western mentality. In this way he contributed to the first evangelization of the West. The monasteries today, the goal of so many people disoriented by a secularized world, are increasingly becoming centres of spiritual quest and dialogue. May St. Benedict also be the patron of a second evangelization of Europe, together with Saints Cyril and Methodius, patrons of Eastern Europe! Contemporary Europe is undergoing a profound transformation, and just for this reason has a need for the Gospel to find the way that may lead it to the construction of an ever more human face of society. We must not ignore the fact that the followers of St. Benedict are now scattered all over the world and that the monastic communities are becoming a ferment of the Gospel, in this world characterized by globalization, bearers of peace, the motto always written as a hope and an announcement over the doors of their monasteries. Paul VI’s proclamation of Benedict as Patron of Europe at Montecassino is an emblem of this: Montecassino, which was destroyed 60 years ago, has become a symbol of the absurdity of war, of the recklessness of a world without God, and, simultaneously, a symbol of the peace that, as God’s gift, can be born and reborn even over the rubble of the past.