Marie Mohamed, age 15, of Champaign, Ill., for her question:

WHAT IS A TRAPPIST?

A Trappist is a monk who belongs to the Roman Catholic Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.  Trappists devote most of their time to prayer, meditation and many hours of manual labor each day.

Trappists sleep on boards and straw pillows and observe strict rules of fasting and silence. They do these things as a penance for sin.

The head of a Cistercian monastery in LaTrappe, France, reformed the Cistercian order in 1664. The reformed order came to be known as Trappist, after the monastery's name.

A famous American poet and religious writer named Thomas Merton became a Trappist monk at the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He described his life in a popular 1948 book called "The Seven Storey Mountain."