How are things looking for the Monks of St. Paul in Poland today?
From my observation it looks very good at the moment. We have forty-two novices in our novitiate and we have eighty-two seminarians in our own Pauline seminary at Cracow. On the whole we are looking for places to put our monks; the monasteries are full. Could you give us some idea of the kind of life and work you found in a typical monastery? Well, our Order is centred around the monastery of Jasna Gora in the city of Czestachowa. That is our mother-house where our Father General lives. It has the shrine of the famous Black Madonna which is the main place of pilgrimage for Polish people in Poland. So the life and heart of the Order is centred on this monastery, which has about one hundred and five monks. The other monasteries in Poland are attached to shrine churches. We do run an occasional parish, but our churches usually have some special devotional aspects to them. For example, our novitiate church has a fourteenth century miraculous statue of Our Lady of the Family. Another has a
