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Dear friends, Around 7:40 AM, a powerful earthquake struck close to Norcia. The monks are all safe, but our hearts go immediately to those affected, and the priests of the monastery are searching for any who may need the Last Rites. The Basilica of St. Benedict, the historic church built atop the birthplace of St. Benedict, was flattened by this most recent quake. May this image serve to illustrate the power of this earthquake, and the urgency we monks feel to seek out those who need the Sacraments on this difficult day for Italy. Relying, as ever, on your prayers...

The centuries-old Basilica of St. Benedict in Norcia — already damaged in a spate of strong quakes in central Italy — was "destroyed" early Sunday in the latest and greatest of tremors, its monks said. The monastery was among dozens of building in towns scattered throughout the mountainous region to collapse during the 6.6-magnitude quake that struck around 7:40 a.m., according to reports. There was no immediate reports of fatalities, but officials with Italy’s civil protection agency said there were injuries following the seismic activity. First responders rushed to piles of rubble searching for trapped victims after the tremor woke...

Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Angela Giuffrida report that while it is clear that structures sustained major damage, it is too early to tell whether the latest disaster caused major injuries or fatalities: “It all came down, now there is no more town,” said the mayor of Arquata del Tronto, Aleandro Petrucci. But, he added, there were already “red zones” in place that had been abandoned after the previous quakes. “The few people who remained have gone out to the streets, and are embracing. Now we’re going around to see what happened,” he said. Cesare Spuri, the head of Civil Protection in...

Shallow - may have caused considerable damage. Map

I first met Brother Augustine Wilmeth when he was one of the students where I served as chaplain. As a convert, he was intensely interested not only in his new Catholic faith but in the more traditional expressions of life and worship.I followed his progress through the years and had the chance last summer to visit him a few months before he took his first vows as a monk at the Benedictine monastery that has been reestablished at Norcia in Italy.Brother Augustine spoke to me for Aleteia about his vocation, his life in the monastery and his work brewing...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Even before retired Pope Benedict XVI set up a pontifical council for new evangelization and convoked a world Synod of Bishops on the theme, a new group of Benedictine monks was using Latin and liturgy to reach out to those whose faith was weak or nonexistent. Now they've added beer to the blend, and people are flocking to the monastery in Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict, about 70 miles northeast of Rome in the Umbrian countryside. snip