Episode 21: Interview with Fr. Columba Stewart, OSB

Fr. Columba Stewart is kind of like a cross between a Benedictine monk and Indiana Jones! Since becoming the executive director of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) at St. John’s Abbey in 2003, Columba has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and India, cultivating relationships with communities possessing manuscript collections from the early medieval to early modern periods. A graduate of Harvard, Yale, and Oxford universities, Father Columba has published extensively in his research field of early Christian monasticism and received numerous grants and fellowships in support of his scholarship. Father Columba and HMML have been featured on many international media outlets, including the CBS news program, “60 Minutes,” BBC Radio Newshour, The Atlantic, The Economist, Harvard Magazine, PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.