HERMIT OF SACRO MONTE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 88, 12 January 1928, Page 16

HERMIT OF SACRO MONTE

DEATH OF ARRESTING CHARACTER Italy lost ono of her famous characters ,the other day through the death of the Hermit Of the Sacred Mountain (aacro Monte) of Varallo, in the province of Wo vara, Piedmont. He was 81 years of age. Tor forty-one years he had been a familiar figure to the thousands of pilgrims who came yearly to visit the ancient shrine, with its forty-six chapels ranged along the winding path of the beautiful ascent. Ha first appeared on the mountain in 1886, and from that time until his death he never left it He lived like a hermit of old, dedicating himself to prayer and meditation and to the cultivation'of a small garden Jn which he raised rare and beautiful flowers to adorn the shrine of the Madonna. ' Tall and straight in spite of his years, entirely bald, and always dressed in a loose jacket of blue linen and trousers of the same material, he was a figure that arrested the eye of every pilgrim.He was a gentle soul, extremely affable and full of human kindness. On one subject only he' refused to talk, and that was his past before he came to the mountain. He belonged to no religious order, and followed no particular rule. His name was Giuseppe de Rocco, and he was born at San Stino di Livenza, in the province of Venice, in 1846. That is all that was definitely known of him. Gossip has it that he became a hermit following the death of his young wife', who was ' killed by accident. The hermit lived frugally on. the offerings of pilgrims. He received thousands of lire from visitors. He spent little on himself. Most of . the . money went toward the construction of a beautiful chapel and a little house. He may have had some premonition of his death, for he had prepared his own grave. ; His end .came while he was playing a hymn.