Impressions of a Cistercian monk's life in Rome from 1955 to 2005

Father Lebuin van Midden was a Dutch Cistercian stationed in Rome to help run the order's generalate house for roughly 50 years. In a wonderful moment of serendipity, a regional archive in North Brabant, where he was born and died, has put some of his personal photos online. This rare photographic material shows 20th-century monks in medieval tonsures in papal audiences, Cistercian abbots visiting for Vatican II and attending General Chapters, even smoking cigars: they are impressions of Cistercian life so near and yet so far away. 

Above, abbots taking a break in the garden. Below, Fr. Lebuin with a young relative.