A lovely news article appears on page A4 of today's New York Times, online here, featuring the Benedictines of Norcia and their resilience following a magnitude-6.5 earthquake in 2016.
Elizabeth Povoledo, based in the Times' Rome bureau, wrote the feature article, with photos by Alessandro Penso. Abbot Benedict Nivakoff, OSB, discussed the delicious beer brewed there and how a percentage of the restoration effort has been aided by sales of Birra Nursia.
Some excerpts:
They may have chosen a contemplative life of prayer, detached from world affairs, but last month a small community of Benedictine monks threw a very big bash for the opening of their new monastery on a hill overlooking the central Italian town of Norcia, where St. Benedict was born.
After a Mass and a seated dinner for 1,000 — about half of them Norcia residents — the monks officially settled in, eight years after a devastating earthquake upended a sizable part of Norcia and destroyed their previous space.
At the festivities, they served “Nursia,” their craft beer whose sales supported the restoration of the 16th-century capuchin monastery that the community had bought after returning to Norcia 25 years ago, following a two-century hiatus. The celebration was also a moment of hope for an area struggling to revive itself after the earthquake compounded years of depopulation.
“They could have left after the earthquake,” Alberto Naticchioni, a former mayor of Norcia, said of the 20 monks. “Instead they rolled up their sleeves and started rebuilding. It gave an important signal.”
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For the monks, however, fund-raising was helped by beer sales, “which remained pretty stable” throughout, “despite Covid and the war in Ukraine,” said the Rev. Augustine Wilmeth, the head brewer at the monastery, which last month was elevated to abbey status, signaling it had taken root there.
The Rev. Benedict Nivakoff, the abbot, said beer sales covered about 15 to 20 percent of reconstruction, with donations funding the rest.
In his homily at a Mass celebrating St. Benedict’s July 11 feast day, Father Nivakoff spoke of the “virtue of patience.” But he said in an interview that for the monks, and residents of the earthquake-struck region — some 575,000 people, according to government estimates — “it’s been hard.”
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The monks’ presence has helped attract visitors, Mayor Giuliano Boccanera said. They have also drawn Roman Catholic families who moved to the area to participate in their traditional religious practices.
And the monks themselves are transplants: Only two are Italian, the rest coming from around the world, including several from the United States.
“We made vows here, vows which were for life,” Father Nivakoff said. “Our hope was to stick to that.”
