Cristiana Piccardo was the long-time abbess of an unusual Cistercian community in Italy. "We have always believed," she writes, "that the monastic charism can be a precious 'talent' offered to our contemporary world, and there are moments in history when what normally remains hidden should come into the light." These words accurately describe both the force behind the story of the Vitorchiano monastic family and the account of it given in Living Wisdom, her refl ection on the meaning of that story. Over the course of four decades, the Abbey of Vitorchiano founded no fewer than six new...