Built in 1535 just above the village of Bigorio, the famous Santa Maria monastery overlooking Lake Lugano is home to only three priests. "Fra Roberto", who from 1966 to 2016 and, at 85 years old splendidly worn, in still assumes responsibility waiting for a successor, welcomes the visitors. The silence is muffled as in any convent of The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. In this great building - many times enlarged and restructured over the centuries and which includes conference...
more »Built in 1535 just above the village of Bigorio, the famous Santa Maria monastery overlooking Lake Lugano is home to only three priests. "Fra Roberto", who from 1966 to 2016 and, at 85 years old splendidly worn, in still assumes responsibility waiting for a successor, welcomes the visitors. The silence is muffled as in any convent of The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. In this great building - many times enlarged and restructured over the centuries and which includes conference rooms, museum, chapel, cells brothers, refectories, or even kitchen - now live only three Capuchins: Brother Roberto, Brother Ugo and Brother Michele, "Understand well, explains the charismatic Fra Roberto - renowned painter and glazier -as early as the 1960s, my predecessor Brother Callisto had realized that the lack of vocation in our order would get worse more and more. He had decided that the convent should not not remain a closed community but to become "a house open" to others.
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