Criminal serving time with monks begs to be sent back to prison

And they used to call them "hardened criminals" ...

"Criminal serving his sentence with monks pleads to be sent back to prison... because monastery life is too hard" (Mail Online, January 5, 2012):

Thief David Catalano, 31, was sent to a Santa Maria degli Angeli community run by Capuchin monks in Sicily last November.

But he found their austere lifetstyle too tough to handle and soon escaped. After a short while on the run he was caught by police and sent back.


On Monday he fled for the second time in six weeks, only to swiftly turn himself in at a police station and beg officers to send him back to jail in the nearby town of Nicosia.

He told the stunned policemen: 'Prison is better than being at that hostel run by monks.'

A police spokesman said: 'Catalano arrived out of the blue and said there was no way he could stay on with the monks.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]