FAMOUS HERMIT

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 November 1927, Page 2

FAMOUS HERMIT

DEDICATED TO PRAYER. Italy lost one of her famous characters the other day through the death of the Hermit of the Sacred Mountain (Sacro Monte) of Varallo, in the province of Novara, Piedmont. He was 81 years of age. For forty-one years he has been a familiar figure to the thousands of pilgrims who go yearly to visit the ancient shrine, with its forty-six chapels ranged along the winding path of the beautiful ascent. He 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 in 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 kiled by accident. The hermit lived frugally on the offerings of pilgrims. 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.