Mary Fisher discovers the physical and mental trials of walking the Cammino di San Benedetto.
"To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” as St John Henry Newman so famously said, and I found myself up to my waist in history as I walked the Cammino di San Benedetto in Italy this summer. Whilst studying theology at Oxford during my time at St Stephen’s House, before my reception into the Church, I was always struck by the depth and richness of the history of the Faith: by the monastic communities that evolved over time, from the early Desert Fathers and hermits in caves, to the formalising of a Rule by St Benedict that inspires religious communities up to the present day; and by the way these communities formed great thinkers and commissioned great works of art, all in the name of Jesus and for the greater glory of God.
