Some years ago I spent several days in the surgical ward of a provincial hospital. My coming had, I learnt later, wrought a subtle change in the patients’ general behaviour, but I was accepted as one of them, and was pleased to find a camaraderie of quite a remarkable kind among the men, who were of all ages. There were two exceptions to this, but each of these unfriendly characters was eventually won over by the whole ward. There was officially no other Catholic patient, and this perhaps made it easier for each of the men to look on the monk as ‘belonging’ to him.

It was an enriching experience in many ways. Among much else I learnt something of the complex problem provided by the injunction to visit the sick, which the catechism calls one of the corporal works of mercy.