The Cave Dweller - Life of Fr. Benyamin the Hermit

Fr. Benyamin walking out of his cave

Moving to Live in St. Bishoy Monastery:

From then on he went to the wilderness of Shiheet (Scetes) to be close to H.H. the Pope in St. Bishoy Monastery, and to get the necessary treatment with ease. He went there on Wednesday 27/10/1973, and just after the first month, he was officially affiliated with St. Bishoy Monastery. On Tuesday 30/10/1973, H.H. the Pope gave him the name of Benyamin El Anba-Bishoy, the name he is known by today.

His love for solitude there was apparent from the very beginning. He lived in a quiet cell and leaned towards the quiet life more than usual. As for his assigned work which he carried out for seven full years there, he was working in the monastery’s farms. He first worked in the farm by the lake, then at a farm located within the monastery itself and later in the monastery’s farm by the desert road. He was very successful in this particular work.

In his last period of illness, he told the Fathers present and the doctors who treated him that he could not bear the hard effort the work in the farms required of him. From there he started thinking of a different lifestyle.

During this period. some of the Fathers of St. Bishoy Monastery said that Fr. Benyamin carried out the rite of the weekly lock-up, he would not go out except only on Sundays.

He lived in a cell inside the retreat house building for the priests, and then he switched to one of the monks’ cell in the new building of the monastery (second floor).

He began urgently asking H.H. the Pope to give him permission to live in solitude (in the desert) and he kept asking for years until finally he [the Pope] allowed him this, and he [Fr. Benyamin] took a small cave close to Der El-Suryan. He began setting up the cave to make it suitable for living and from henceforth he lived in there from August, 1980, for seven years until his departure in the end of 1987.