82 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION life of the church. Many monasteries, old and new, Catholic and ecumenical, as well as many parishes, offer Eucharistic hospitality to non-Catholic Christians. However, not all of the suggested communities meet the criteria for formal dispensation. Monastero di Bose is one that does, which ledme to approach that community. A first introduction to Monastero di Bose took place during my visit in February 2017. Email correspondence throughout the first year of my PhD had not been sufficient for me to understand the community adequately, nor for the community to get familiar with my project and to commit to it. My initial contact person introduced me to the eventual gatekeeper, a brother who spent over 45 years in the community and who is close to founder Enzo Bianchi and current prior Luciano Manicardi. My request to include the community in my research was met with consent, subject to similar conditions as in the case of Taizé. Initially, I was given permission to interview the contact person and the gatekeeper; later, uponmy request, I was permitted to interview a sister as well. From a general scientific perspective, the substantial role of gatekeepers and the dependence on permission by the communities’ priors can be reviewed as problematic, a necessary evil at best. However, their involvement has been indispensable for accessing the communities – and thus their experiences and insights - in the first place. Obviously, their respective roles have impacted the course and content of my research; I have been compelled to make adjustments in order to gain trust and to acquire permission and cooperation. To a certain extent, this is inevitable in empirical research. Positionality of the researcher All interview sessions except one took place in simple and small reception rooms, used by the communities for private conversations with guests. Interestingly, these rooms (in both monasteries) are located on the borders between the private space of the community and the space reserved for guests: the grey area between monastics and visitors. They find themselves near the respective reception areas. The three rooms used all contained a simple interior: tile floor, white walls, a couple of chairs around a (coffee) table, an occasional plant. One interview was conducted in a sheltered corner of the courtyard adjacent to one of the rooms. The location reveals my own position as a researcher vis-à-vis the community: despite my earlier research and familiarity with the community (I have visited Taizé and joined a stage of its Pilgrimage of Trust on Earth without any research interest in the past as well), I remain, of course, an outsider to the actual monastic communities. However,
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