Botswana: Book Review

Posted to the web 18 July 2008 Sheridan Griswold For the Sake of Silence is the story of the Trappist monasteries and missions in South Africa, from their beginnings at Sunday Rivers in the Eastern Cape in 1880 to their amazing expansion and then demise in Natal through to 1922. The tale begins in Europe in 1863, with the arrival of a Wendelin Pfanner at Mariawald, a monastery in Germany, who later was to advance in South Africa to become Abbot Francis Pfanner of Mariannhill near Pinetown outside Durban-it became the largest monastery in the world. He came from Langen, near Lake Constance. He had elected to join the Trappists. He became known simply as Franz. Franz was first posted to serve a community of nuns in Croatia and then allowed to establish a monastery among Muslims in Bosnia. He was a religious leader with a knack... [read full story]