Saint Romuald

Romuald was born around 951 in Ravenna, Italy, into a noble family. When he was about twenty his father killed a relative in a duel over property. Horrified, Romuald went to the abbey of Sant'Apollinare in Classe to do forty days of penance for his father, and stayed as a monk. Finding the community too lax, he left to live under the guidance of a strict hermit named Marinus.

For the rest of his long life Romuald traveled through Italy reforming monasteries and founding hermitages, always seeking a deeper life of prayer. Around 1012 he founded the hermitage of Camaldoli in the mountains of Tuscany, the mother house of the Camaldolese Benedictines, who combine a community monastery with hermits living in separate cells. He is remembered for a short rule urging the monk to sit in his cell as in paradise. He died at Val di Castro on June 19, 1027.

Camaldolese monks and nuns in Italy, the United States and Brazil keep his feast, and the Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli in Tuscany still welcomes guests for silent retreat.

Romuald is often shown with a ladder reaching to heaven, from a vision of monks climbing in white robes.