Buckfast Abbey marks its millennium this year. One of the highlights was on 24 May, when the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship, presided at Mass in the abbey church in the presence of the papal legate, Cardinal Anders Arborelius, a Carmelite and the first Swedish cardinal.

The last thousand years have not always looked kindly on the monastic life and the community’s presence in the Devon village on the River Dart has not been continuous. The Benedictine community that lives there now dates back only to 1882, when a group of six monks, exiled from their monastery at La Pierre-qui-Vire during a period of heightened anti-clericalism in France, settled at Buckfast in a house built on the ruins of the medieval abbey.