A Catholic deacon has won a competition to live in one of central Europe’s last hermitages, beating 50 other applicants to occupy a 350-year-old cliffside cell above a small Austrian town.
Stan Vanuytrecht, 58, responded to an advertisement placed by Fr Alois Moser, which asked for someone with a “connection to Christian belief” and “at peace with themselves”.
The role, which is unpaid, became vacant after the previous incumbent left to pursue a writing career in Vienna. The hermitage, in Saalfeden, 40 miles south of Salzburg, has been occupied every year since it was built 350 years ago.
