This year the preacher of our annual Community Retreat, 9-16 November, has been Dom Friedhelm Tissen OSB, Abbot of the Monastery of Kornelimunster near Aachen in Germany. Aachen was once the seat of Charlemagne, and from there St. Benedict of Aniane spread his monastic Reform, based on our own St. Benedict's Rule.
The founding date of Kornelimunster was 814.
Abbot Friedhelm's conferences were all based on the Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, about which we read in Book II of the Dialogues, usually attributed to St. Gregory the Great.