The author of these ramblings through the Himalayas is a priest of the Catholic Church in Italy now on assignment in California.  To be precise, he is a canon of the Cathedral of Isernia, a title that once upon a time actually meant a great deal (canons selected, often from their own ranks, the candidates who would be ordained bishops).
Today, the economic and social realities of modern Italy make this title little more than a cherished relic of the past.  There is a tiny house in the center of the old part of Isernia that was once a church; its walls are constructed with bits and pieces of Roman and Samnite carved stones.  The neighborhood is called "Sant'Angelo" and in fact, my title as canon is "St. Michael, Archangel", because in the Middle Ages ten percent of the rents from this part of town and from the outlying farms would have been paid to support the ministry and household of the Canon of St. Michael's.

I have been living in Isernia since 1986, directing pastoral programs in the ancient shrine church of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, the doctor saints.
For centuries, miracles of healing have been occurring in the lives of people devoted to these saints.  In particular, this church is famous in the annals of the history of religion because the "specialty miracle" here was to restore fertility, apparently through the power to destroy curses and spells cast by the local witches and magicians.
Exorcism and healing continue to be a lived reality in this mountainous part of the region of the Molise, perhaps the most thinly populated and rarely visited part of Italy, stretching east from Monte Cassino to the Adriatic coastline south of the Abruzzo.

I found my way to this world through friendship and collaboration with the former bishop of Isernia, Msgr. Ettore Di Filippo, the retired Archbishop of Campobasso, who worked for many years in New York as counsellor to the Papal Representative at the United Nations.  In the early 1980's, I met Msgr. Di Filippo in the course of my work as a theological editor on the east side of Manhattan.  I was fresh from a theological degree from Harvard and a two-year contemplative experience guided by my spiritual father, Dom David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B. Shortly after becoming Bishop of Isernia in 1983, Msgr. Di Filippo, knowing of my desire to combine a form of the contemplative life with priesthood and scholarship,  invited me to take charge of the Hermitage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian. I was at the time completing my doctorate in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University.  However, eager to move toward ordination, I moved to Italy in 1986, gradually bringing my library with me.  I successfully defended the dissertation, "A Study of the Buddhist Saint in Relation to the Biographical Tradition of Milarepa" in 1988, a few months after being ordained to the priesthood.