Benedikt and his twin sister, Scholastica were born in Norcia (Nursia, Umbria, Italy) in 480 AD to an aristocratic family.  At the tender age of three he was sent with his nurse to Rome to be educated.  For three years he lived the life of a hermit in a cave near Subiaco in the Sabinian mountains east of Rome.  He became head of the nearby monastery Vicovaro, but returned to Subiaco after surviving attempts by the monastery’s monks to poison him.  He subsequently laid the foundations for twelve monasteries in the region.  Before 529 he mved to Monte Cassino where he founded that famous monastery that was to become the centre of occidental monkhood and the cradle of the Benedictine order: " Ora et labora ", “ pray and work “ and see one’s studies as the most important tasks was the motto.  This motto became the school of holiness, saintliness, and was the one of the foundations for the spiritual and material culture of the Middle Ages.  Benedict proves himself as a man of wisdom, of actions and organizational genius, thereby becoming the rescuer of ancient culture and of the master builders of the Christian Occident.  Pope Pius XII called him the “Pater Europae” and in 1958 named him patron saint of the Occident.