Prisoner finds monastic life too hard, opts for prison

(The Telegraph) - David Catalano this week fled the halfway house in Sicily for the second time in six weeks, complaining that the regime run by the bearded Capuchins was too austere.

The 31-year-old inmate first ran away from the Santa Maria degli Angeli halfway house, near the town of Enna in central Sicily, at the end of November.

He turned himself into a police station, was re-arrested, and sent back.

But the criminal, who was serving a sentence for theft and had been sent to the institution under a form of house arrest, made a fresh break on Monday evening.

"I don't want to go back with the Capuchins," he told probation officers, according to the Ansa news agency.

The authorities acceded to his request – he was promptly sent to a prison in the nearby town of Nicosia.

The Capuchins are an off-shoot of the Franciscans, from whom they split in the early 16th century.

They advocated a much simpler, more rigorous monastic code based on poverty, prayer and penance, which they claimed was more faithful to the ideals of St Francis of Assisi.

They were not allowed to own property or handle money, and their food was obtained by begging.

They are known for their distinctive brown cowls and take their name from the Italian word for hood – 'cappuccio'.

One of the order's more macabre legacies is a crypt beneath a church in Rome, Santa Maria della Concezione, which contains the skulls and skeletons of more than 4,000 Capuchin monks.

Bones are arranged in bizarre patterns, including as chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, in four subterranean chapels.

Visitors to the ossuary are greeted by a plaque which reads: "What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be."