AN ITALIAN CHARACTER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5227, 16 January 1928, Page 4

AN ITALIAN CHARACTER.

HERMIT OF SACK© MONTE.

DEATH OF ARRESTING FIGURE.

Italy lost one of 'her famous characters the other day through the death of. the Hermit of the Sacred Mountain (Sacro Monte): of VarallQ, in the province of Novara, Piedmont. He was, 81 years of age. k For 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. He first appeared on the mountain in 1886, and from that time until ‘his death he never left it. He lived like a thermit 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 t'he 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 wa& killed by accident.

The hermit lived frugally on the offerings ofi pilgrims. He received thousands of lire from visitors. He spent little on himself. Most of the money went towards 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.