Feast Day: March 30 Canonized: Pre-Congregation — venerated from the sixth century; feast in the Roman Martyrology Order / Vocation: Order of Saint Benedict — monk at Monte Cassino Abbey; abbot of Saint Peter's Abbey near Pontecorvo Patron of: Monte Cassino region · Pontecorvo · Monks who serve in obscurity
The Monk the Bishop Found Behind the Door
He was Greek by birth — part of the constant stream of Eastern Christians who found their way to the great Benedictine houses of central Italy during the fifth and sixth centuries, drawn by the reputation of Monte Cassino and its founder. He entered the monastery on the mountain and lived there as a monk of genuine quality. His life was unremarkable in the way that genuinely holy lives at Monte Cassino tended to be unremarkable: prayer, work, silence, the daily round of the liturgy on the limestone ridge above the valley of the Rapido.
When the community gathered to elect a new abbot at a point during his tenure, Clinius was not in the chapter house where the deliberation was taking place. He had been left behind to watch the door and guard the church's relics — the humble, necessary task of the man who would not be missed from the deliberation, or so the rest assumed. The bishop who was presiding over the election noticed the man behind the door. He understood, in the way that bishops who are also holy men sometimes understand these things, that the man humble enough to be trusted with the door was precisely the man humble enough to be trusted with more.
He made him abbot — not of Monte Cassino itself, but of Saint Peter's Abbey near Pontecorvo in the valley below, a dependent house that needed a superior of genuine formation. Clinius accepted. He governed. He died as abbot, his relics venerated at Pontecorvo, his feast kept in the Roman Martyrology on March 30.
He is for the monks and sisters who are assigned to watch the door while the others decide. He is for those whose obscurity is the very mark of their fitness for what is asked of them.
Prayer to Saint Clinius
O God, who found Saint Clinius behind the door and sent him from the door to the abbacy, and who made the man left behind into the man most needed, grant through his intercession that those who serve in obscurity may serve it faithfully, and that those who are passed over for the important rooms may be found where they were, doing what was asked of them, when You come to give them more. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint Clinius of Pontecorvo, pray for us.
| Born | Unknown — Greece |
| Died | c. 500 — Pontecorvo, Lazio, Italy — natural death as abbot |
| Feast Day | March 30 |
| Order / Vocation | Order of Saint Benedict — monk at Monte Cassino; abbot of Saint Peter's Abbey near Pontecorvo |
| Canonized | Pre-Congregation — Roman Martyrology |
| Patron of | Monte Cassino region · Pontecorvo · Monks who serve in obscurity |
| Known as | Clinio · Clino · Clinius of Monte Cassino |
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