Romuald

Saint Romuald was born around 951 in Ravenna in northeastern Italy, into the noble Onesti family. As a young man he lived like many of his class, until a shocking turning point: at about twenty he witnessed his father kill a relative in a duel. Stricken with sorrow, Romuald withdrew to the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe for forty days of penance, and soon embraced the monastic life there. Yet his hunger for deeper conversion led him beyond ordinary observance. He sought the guidance of the hermit Marinus near Venice, and later lived for years near the monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, where prayer, silence, and study shaped his vision. For roughly three decades Romuald traveled through Italy, reforming lax monasteries and founding new hermitages, steadfastly calling souls to purity of heart and contemplative stillness. In 1012 he established the hermit cells at Camaldoli, the seed of the Camaldolese Order, uniting solitary and communal monastic life. He is venerated as a father of renewed eremitical holiness and is patron of Bonarcado. His feast day is June 19.