When I arrived here, this place lost in the mountains of the Limina was a land of anyone. Abandonment, solitude, uninhabited and largely destroyed village houses. Do you see the church? He was seriously damaged, with weeds and animal dung everywhere … ».
Fra Damiano, Romano Zavaglia, is 77 years old and lives as a hermit, in the heart of Aspromonte. A life from between wolves, wild boars, rates and foxes, in a small and very modest house in an abandoned village. He is nice, he has a contagious smile and a story that is anything but banal to tell.
«Since as a teenager – he says – I worked in Genoa, I have been a hairdresser for more than 30 years. In Mammola, my country of origin, I was in summer, not every year, short holiday periods, but nothing more. Slowly I gained the decision to leave my business and respond to the call of the Lord. It was not a sudden thing, because I was already in the church, I also made apostolate in my salon, with customers, and I attended the Capuchin friars of Genoa. Shortly after 50, therefore, I decided to make the big leap. I realized that the time had come, so I closed the shop and I walked on my way. I started in Genoa, then I was also in Assisi and in various other Italian convents until I decided to return to Calabria and lead, as a Franciscan tertiary sector, my life of hermit in this “gift” of God and nature, an isolated but suggestive, beautiful place “.
Arriving at 75 springs, inspired by the teaching of San Francesco d’Assisi, thus decided to “embrace” solitude, in an abandoned mountain village of Locride, in the mountains of the limina. He has been built practically with naked hands, his new life between the Damiano, re -adapting to the least worst a very modest house next to the church, close to a very dense and suggestive pine forest, of the old “Limina village”, built about seventy years ago and now abandoned, a dozen small houses – they had to serve as a holiday homes – all almost in ruins. A place so abandoned and far from urban centers, even the smaller ones, but beyond all wonderful saying, in which the beauty of nature merges with the quiet of the soul, and where it really seems to listen to the breath of God.
At the “Limina village”, life, in all senses, is reforuded, because Fra Damiano in this remote place of Aspromonte takes care of the small church and the area that surrounds it. On the mandate of the bishop of the diocese of Locri-Gerace, Msgr. Francesco Oliva, between Damiano, was able to occupy the house adjacent to the church of the Limina village, put it back at best and passes here, in all seasons, his days. He does not have television at home and not even the phone or heating. His days are divided between prayer, local cleaning work and above all custody of the small church named after the Madonna del Rosario. Among his duties there is also that of custodian – he goes there three times a week – of the next suggestive, sanctuary of San Nicodemo, patron of Mammola, who for years has hosted the hermit father Ernesto Monteleone.
Fra ‘Damiano is happy with the choice made; Loneliness basically is what he was looking for; Everything else, the absence of television, telephone, of many other things that we do not all judge indispensable, and the cold, which in the winter months beats hard even with abundant snowfall, bears it without problems.
«The living conditions, often really extreme, do not weigh me at all. – he explains – I say that it is difficult to live so only if one is not used to it, or maybe he has other expectations; But if one part convinced of what he does, there are no problems. There are also difficulty sometimes, but they are overcome. To warm me there is a small wood stove, I don’t care about TV, the radio is enough for me, I need little, and then I live in one of the most beautiful places in Calabria ».
«Fear of being alone in such an isolated place? I never asked myself this question. Moreover, what should I be afraid of? In the morning when I open the door of the house, sometimes I find myself in front of wolves or wild straws or hungry stray dogs, but I try to be careful. For the rest I rely on the Lord. Just before seven I start the day with prayer, then there is the Rosary, I read the catechesis of St. John Paul II. In the rest of the day I clean the church and the green area of the village, I make the laundry, I prepare myself to eat, I cut the wood, I cultivate my little vegetable garden, I collect, when it is the period, mushrooms, asparagus, blackberries, nuts and chestnuts and when I am at home I read some books and I am, above all, in the company of a cat that several months ago, I have, in the early morning, “knocked” at my door and that is my shadow. Another gift of God and nature ».
He smiles, between Damiano d’Aspromonte, and greets us. His little lonely world needs him.
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