Pilgrims, Priests, and Breaking Bread in an Alpine Monastery

A bell summons us to supper in the dining room of a hospice that’s been welcoming followers of Sigeric’s trail for ten centuries. Outside, snow blows sideways, a river of white, lapping at the four‑story spiritual sanctuary. Droopy‑eyed Saint Bernard dogs, looking world‑weary but not the least bit put off by the weather, pull their two‑legged leash-mates through the first white stuff of the season. The place is nearly full, people scampering about in shorts and flip‑flops as they dry their clothes. Earlier, I was greeted by an older man in a black robe who spoke good English to my Italian. He gave me a small room with a view of the blizzard and told me the rules, which boiled down to respect this place, it’s been here forever and seen it all. Oh, and the showers are set to a timer, so be quick. 

Saint Bernard has been a safe space since well before that term took on its current meaning, shelter from the storm. Charles Dickens spent the night here in 1846. Napoleon was given two glasses of wine and a slice of rye bread by the monks when he arrived in 1800. I was told I could get the same across the street, at a small bar in a newer hostel, or wait for dinner here at the inn of the Augustinians. 

The dogs have the run of this pass, staying in a well‑tended kennel, with a museum devoted to their service. They’ve been bred for size and tolerance of cold, and along the way, they picked up personality traits that make them a delight to be around. They’re comically huge, weighing as much as I do, 170 pounds, with a tongue that looks like a pink sirloin steak, if meat could drool. Their equally huge paws act like snowshoes, allowing them to romp through a drift. They’re smart, sensitive, and sociable. They hate to be alone or to miss out on a party. They’re low maintenance, aside from prodigious food requirements. They don’t like hot weather or confined spaces.

Over the years, Saint Bernards have rescued more than 2,500 people, using their exceptional sense of smell to find lost souls in the snow. As selfless and likable as they are, they lead relatively short lives, eight to ten years. They no longer carry casks of brandy around their necks—it’s doubtful they ever did. Nor are they used anymore for rescues, most of which are done by helicopter. The dogs are just too heavy. In that sense, the Saint Bernards of Great Saint Bernard are living relics. 

The hospice and the dogs are named for Bernard of Menthon, a bishop from the Italian side of the pass. Like Gonzaga, he was born into wealth and nobility, but balked at following the family path to prosperity. He jumped out the window of a castle rather than go through with an arranged marriage. After that, Bernard gave up a life of privilege to serve pilgrims and pagans in the land that reaches up to the sky, between the Valais on the Swiss side and the Val d’Aosta on the Italian.

It was not just snowdrifts of 40 feet that threatened people trying to walk over the mountains to Rome, but thieves and hostile Saracens, as raiding bands of Muslims were known. Bernard established this place about the year 1050, the start of an unbroken tradition of rescue and refuge. 

At a communal dinner table, I meet a cyclist and his son, their faces sandpapered by the elements; three millennial‑age women, exuding the spirit of a generation that isn’t afraid to try anything and post far too many pictures of it along the way; two French mountain climbers; a woman in her thirties from New York; and a psychologist from the Italian seaport of Piombino named Stefano. He is 73 and has been making a pilgrimage to the mountainous part of the V.F. every year for the past two decades.

I try to block out the old joke about meeting shrinks—after you say Hello, he says, I wonder what you meant by that. Stefano is radiant with good cheer, as is everyone at the table. We’re all stranded, which nobody is complaining about. Where were these people on the trail below? Not on it, as it turns out. Most are starting their camino at the highest point of the V.F. 

A soup course of zuppa di zucca, steam rising from the gold of liquefied pumpkin, gets us started. Carafes of wine, a Valais pinot noir made by monks, is passed around, and is wonderful as well. It’s good to be speaking Italian with Stefano, rolling the rrrrrs and punctuating the points with my hands. When our kids were very young, our family moved to Italy while I was on a book leave; we lived there long enough to fall in love with the language, the landscape, and the people. I can stay in most conversations, though my jokes often fall flat. 

Stefano says he returns to the alpine monastery because it helps him see things clearly. He takes long hikes by himself, meditative strolls among the pyramidal peaks that neighbor Mont Blanc. The silence, the distance and space, is everything that the clutter of cities below are not. “I always discover something new about myself,” he says.

I mention a story I’d read about Pope Francis just a day or so ago, that he saw a therapist for six months when he was a 42‑year‑old priest. His analyst was Jewish, all the better to avoid the clutter of doctrine. “I needed to clarify some things,” the pope explained. 

“He should have come to Saint Bernard,” says Stefano. “When I leave, I never look at the world in the same way.” 

The main course is a pork tenderloin with carrots and bell peppers, served with polenta. Everyone is ravenous. The woman from New York is taking a break from a management job in high‑end retail. She flies 50,000 miles a year and doesn’t have the spare time to keep a houseplant alive, let alone nurture something so esoteric as her soul. She’s exhausted on weekends, too worn for anything but sleep. She hasn’t read a book off her professional topic in years. She’s lost touch with her friends. Downtime scares her.

“I’m such a cliché,” she says. When someone suggested that she disappear, she thought it was rude at first, and then brilliant. Her research led her to the Via Francigena. She plans to walk for a week, unplugged. By dessert, a panna cotta with mountain berries, we all feel like family. Such is the fast fellowship that comes from being willfully stranded at a high pass in the Alps. We wish one another a hearty buon cammino, clear plates, and retire. 

I stay back and ask the man in the black robe if I can talk to him about this place and his life. He’s happy to oblige me. 

When my sister lost her son—murdered at the age of 17 by a teenager with a gun—she asked me to do a eulogy at the funeral Mass. I hadn’t been to church in many years. My sister, like my mother, held on to her faith. After I arrived at my sibling’s parish in Spokane, I walked past the open casket of her only son. It brought me to immediate and uncontrollable tears. It had been just a few months since we’d played a game of touch football together at Thanksgiving.

In the waning sunlight of November, my nephew slipped past me for a touchdown and did a cartwheel in the end zone. Now here he was—beautiful and lifeless. I kept my eyes down, to prevent people from seeing my tears, and there I caught sight of the sandals of a brown‑robed Franciscan, the priest who would say the Mass. I forget his name. But his words at the service were comforting and stayed with me. More important, they stayed with my sister.

The priest could not explain why her boy would be taken from her at such an age, or how a person who believed in a just God could find a place for an anvil of grief. But over time, he said, my sister would understand. She took that to heart, and in her search she eventually stopped questioning; she felt that God was protecting her son from some unknown evil to come. From that service on, I’ve tried to keep my suspicions in check whenever I meet a priest. I assume that the crimes of other clerics are not theirs. 

Over tea, the man in the black robe formally introduces himself as Father John of Flavigny, a community of Benedictine monks in France, the same order that put me up in Wisques. He has bright eyes behind rimless glasses, with sprigs of short hair. He never intended to become a priest, he says with a burst of laughter. “God, no!” He was going to be a doctor. In his final year of medical school, he went on a spiritual retreat—a last diversion before jumping into the ardors of medicine. What happened next surprised him. 

“They introduced me to the Ignatian Method. Do you know what that is?” 

“I’ve heard of it from the Jesuits. It’s based on their founder, Ignatius. That’s all I know.” 

He explains the method, also called the pedagogical paradigm. It’s a spiritual exercise, more than 450 years old, that involves going through several steps to develop the conscience and give you the tools to be a better person. John tackled this as only a medical student who’d mastered organic chemistry could. 

“‘Argue with yourself,’ they told me. Use contemplation. Repetition. Knock down your assumptions. So I drew up an argument, for and against my mission in life. I did it in a very intellectual, straightforward way. And the conclusion was: join a monastery.” 

He laughs again. This time, I join him. It’s damn funny, actually: a guy on his way to one of the most admired and remunerative professions in the world decides to put everything on hold to take up a life of poverty and meditation with other ascetics in a cloister. And give up women as well. His family, who lives near the Basque country, was perplexed. 

“It took me six years to become a priest.”

“Regrets?” 

“No. I received much more and I can give much more.” That was 40 years ago. He started coming to Saint Bernard because he got mired in doubt, and like the future pope, he needed clarification. In Father John’s case, he became deeply depressed in 1989. 

“They sent me to Saint Bernard to rest. There are times when I felt . . . boxed in at the monastery. Here there is breathing room. It does wonders for me. I’ve been coming back every year. Will you join us for Mass tomorrow?” 

I dodge his question with another of my own. “Do you believe in miracles?” 

Here this man of science, someone who knows more about the mechanics and biology of life than 95 percent of the general public, answers without hesitation. 

“Oh, yes. Absolutely.” 

“Incorruptibles? The bodies of saints that never decay?”

“Yes, of course.” 

“How can you believe these things? You’re a person steeped in logic, reason, the scientific method.” 

“That is exactly right. I wouldn’t believe in miracles if I hadn’t seen them happen. And I have. At Lourdes. It’s very well documented.” 

“Do you have doubts?” 

“About miracles? No. About my faith? Yes. Doubts are allowed by God. Reason can help you come to faith. It’s a bit like training for sports. If you only ride a bicycle with the wind at your back, that’s not going to help you. You need to ride your bike against the wind.” 

I ask him what it’s like to walk around secular Europe in the robe and collar of a Catholic priest. 

“That depends on where you are. I’m mostly well received. But even in Rome, some of the monks would only go to town in civilian clothes, because they were afraid. I’ve only had five or six people yell at me. It’s nothing. Will I see you at Mass?” 

“I can’t say.” He finishes his tea and stifles a yawn. I have one last question for Father John of Flavigny. 

“What’s the best way to make a pilgrimage? For someone on the Via Francigena, give me some advice.” 

“I don’t recommend the rosary.”

“Agreed.” 

“Keep your ears open. You know what the first word of the holy rule of Saint Benedict is? Listen.” 

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From A Pilgrimage to Eternity by Timothy Egan, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2019 by Timothy Egan.