Singing the Office in the crypt church under the Basilica. Originally built in the 2nd century BC, it was the family home of Sts. Benedict and Scolastica.

That press release was not… well… let’s say it’s not the way I would have worded it.

I’ve had a dozen messages from people asking what I’m going to do now that the monks have abandoned Norcia and, as the Most Poorly Worded Press Release in History put it, “transferred the community to Rome.” (I see since yesterday, someone has added the word “temporarily”…still… next time, call me and I’ll write your press release, ok? I’ll even waive the fee.)

There is no way the monks would leave Norcia permanently, or even long-term. I called Fr. Benedict and asked what was going on, and he said no, the majority of the monks are going down to Rome where they’ve been given guest quarters at a large – and half empty – Benedictine monastery, San Anselmo, in Rome. He and another monk have stayed in Norcia and are camping out, so they can offer Mass, sing the Office and generally keep people’s spirits up.

Camping is pretty common, with lots of people unwilling to stay in their houses for fear another quake will come and topple them on their heads. As I was going home yesterday, I saw people putting up tents in their gardens, and sleeping in their cars. Fr. Benedict told the Irish news just now that there are people sleeping fully clothed, so they can jump up at any moment and dash outside.

From their website. This is not one of the larger cracks. Some of the masonry on the roof is ready to come down too.

Although Norcia on the whole came away largely undamaged, the news about the monastery itself isn’t so good and there is quite a lot of structural damage. I was shown significant cracks in supporting walls, a situation that can be extremely dangerous where there are a lot of aftershocks, which there have been. We’d been having them, some of them pretty big (4.5), all day yesterday. The news said it was every few hours, but I felt them every five or ten minutes throughout the day. Today it has calmed down quite a lot. We’ve only had maybe five or six big aftershocks, that is, big enough to rattle the house. But until the area really settles down, houses that had structural damage, meaning cracks in supporting walls, are very unsafe. The ongoing vibrations – some of which are too slight for us to feel – continue to put pressure on the damaged walls, which can then simply collapse at any moment.

The guy who owns the house I’m bunking in came round today to inspect it. He’s one of the architectural engineers whose job it is to look at and assess earthquake damage, and he said it’s in good shape. Not a crack anywhere. The house is 15th century, originally, and has been lived in continually. But old buildings that were abandoned for a long time, like the monastery, and which were not brought up to modern earthquake-resistant standards, are a lot more vulnerable, and that’s what happened to the monks’ house.

If it were a matter of four or five monks, I’m sure the whole community would have stayed, but there are fifteen of them now, plus guests, and finding accommodations for that many people in a crisis situation like this was going to be too much to ask. I’m sure they took the invitation to stay at San Anselmo in part to take pressure off the services here. There are thousands of people displaced all over this area and Norcia, as a large population centre with a lot of spare housing, is going to be taking in a lot of people who have nowhere else to go.

Some good news is that the brewery is fine. There is no damage to the workroom where all the equipment is, or to the warehouse where they do the bottling. So, that’s going to be easy to get going again. But just at the moment, things in Norcia are still pretty much dead. I buzzed round last night on the bike, and almost nothing was open. No shops or restaurants or even tabacchi to get my phone recarica’d. I’ve been at home resting (amazing how tired it can make you to start the day out thinking you were going to die.) today, and will take a stroll about this evening when the sun goes down, and see if I can go to Compline.

Anyway, no. The monks aren’t “leaving” Norcia, in that sense. I have had several phone calls, text messages, emails and FB messages asking what’s going on, and they’re going to stay down in Rome until they can get a full professional assessment of the structural integrity of their monastery. Fr. Benedict told me this will take a few days, but given the sudden heavy demand for such services, I think it’s more likely to be a few weeks.

But they could no more abandon Norcia than I could. This is where they belong, and they know it, and the town knows it. As I said on FB, even, if in a sudden attack of madness, they did intend to leave permanently, the town wouldn’t have it. They’d be koshed on the head and dragged back and probably sat-on until they had regained their collective senses.

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