Many of us, I am sure, have been inspired by the movie Of Gods and Men, the story of a group of Trappist monks who, after making a painful decision not to flee from the violence in Algeria in the 1990s, are eventually martyred by Islamic extremists in 1996. Recently, I was much inspired by reading the diaries of one of those monks, Christophe Lebreton. Published under the title Born from the Gaze of God, The Tibhirine Journal of a Martyr Monk, his diaries chronicle the last three years of his life and give us an insight into his, and his community’s, decision to remain in Algeria in the face of almost certain death. 

CANTERBURY, England - Twelfth-century Roman Catholic monks with their eyes fixed on the equivalent of medieval cash registers were responsible for spreading the story that King Arthur and his golden-haired wife, Guinevere, were buried at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, one of England’s best known and most loved pilgrimage sites.

VATICAN CITY - A 10th-century Armenian monk has been named among the doctors of the Church.