One summer many years ago, a friend asked me to spend three days with him in a small Benedictine priory perched at the top of a hill in the south of Italy. He had been there a few times on a retreat.

The idea was to share the life of the small monastic community, taking part in their times of prayer and joining the monks for their meals, which they took in silence while listening to a brother who would read a book aloud. At the time it came as a surprise to me that monks still existed at all. What drove me to that place was not a spiritual quest, but simple curiosity.