Saint Camillus de Lellis, priest

Before he founded an order built entirely around caring for the sick, Camillus de Lellis lost nearly everything he owned at the gaming table — by his own later account, gambled away down to the shirt on his back.

He had been a soldier, fighting as a mercenary against the Turks, and carried a leg wound from that life that never fully healed. Broke and unemployed, he took work as a laborer on a Capuchin building site, where a conversation with a friar turned his life around. He went to work in a hospital in Rome and was appalled by what he found: patients treated as burdens, left unwashed, given stale bread and worse care. In 1582 he founded the Order of Clerks Regular, Ministers of the Infirm — priests and brothers who took a fourth vow, alongside poverty, chastity and obedience, to serve the sick even at risk to their own lives. They wore a black habit marked with a red cross, and insisted on hygiene, dignity, and real medical competence at a time when hospitals were often just places to die.

"I was sick and you visited me" (Matthew 25:36) was, for Camillus, not a metaphor. He nursed plague victims and the dying into old age, on a leg that ached for decades.

Lord, through the intercession of Saint Camillus, give patience to the sick and tenderness to those who care for them.

View this issue on the web

Feastmail · General Roman Calendar

Feastmail, Dublin, Ireland

You're receiving this because you subscribed at Feastmail. Unsubscribe.