Helena Bachmann

Special for USA TODAY

GENEVA — Wanted: Hermit to live in secluded cave-like cabin to take care of nearby chapel and gorge, dispense wisdom and talk to tourists. Position pays $24,000 a year, plus room and board and a paid vacation.

Twenty-two people applied for this unusual vacancy advertised by the northern Swiss town of Solothurn. Former policeman Michael Daum, 55, snagged the position that has existed since the 15th century.

Starting in October, he will begin a solitary existence in his isolated dwelling.

"I have lots of respect for the new job, and am looking forward to starting it,” Daum told the Solothurner Zeitung newspaper Tuesday.

City Council president Sergio Wyniger said Daum was picked, because "in Michael, we have found a charismatic personality, which is the right quality for our hermit," according to the newspaper.

Daum, who studied theology and meditation after leaving the police force, will take over a position created in 1442 in honor of St. Verena, who was believed to have lived as a recluse in the region.

Daum answered the City Council’s ad in a Catholic weekly publication seeking a “recluse with a Christian background" to fill the job after the previous hermit, Sister Benedicta, left in February.

Another previous hermit, Verena Dubacher, quit after complaining that people wanted to chat with her, and — in a true hermit-like manner — she was unwilling to engage in social interactions.

For those willing to live in solitude, yet also mingle with visitors, the post offers good job security: Johannes Leutenegger, who preceded Dubacher, spent 25 years as the hermit.

Historically, only priests were allowed to hold the position, but in the past decades civilian hermits were also hired.