This is the great Saint Benedict of Nursia, father of all Western monks. Saint Benedict was born in Italy, in 480. In 529, on a mountain called Monte Cassino, he built the first great abbey of the Benedictines. His twin sister, Saint Scholastica, became a nun and a saint. She died forty days before him, on February 10, and they were both buried in the same grave. Saint Benedict died on March 21, standing before the altar, just after he had received Holy Communion. In his humility, he never became a priest. His life was written by the Pope, Saint Gregory the Great. The Benedictine Order, as we are told in the martyrologies of its monasteries, has given the Catholic Church 57,000 known saints. This great Order has also given the Catholic Church thirty-five Popes, of whom seventeen have been declared either Saints or Blesseds.
Saint Benedict, by Fra Angelico
