Saint Camillus de Lellis

Saint Camillus de Lellis was an Italian priest who, after a turbulent youth as a soldier and gambler, devoted his life to the sick and founded the Order of Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick, known as the Camillians. He is the patron of the sick, of hospitals and of nurses. The Church commemorates him on July 14.

He was born on May 25, 1550, at Bucchianico near Chieti, in the Abruzzi. He lost his mother early. Following the example of his father, a professional soldier, he became a mercenary and fought in armies waging war against the Turks. At that time a painful wound opened on his leg, and it never healed for the rest of his life. His greatest weakness was gambling: when his unit was disbanded in 1574, he gambled away everything he had and fell into destitution.

To support himself, he took work on the building of a Capuchin friary at Manfredonia. During a journey to the friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, one of the friars took him aside and told him that God is everything and the rest is nothing, and that one must save the soul, which does not die. These words moved him deeply, and on February 2, 1575, Camillus resolved to break with his former life. Twice he entered the Capuchins, but each time he had to leave because of the wound.

He went for treatment to the Roman hospital of San Giacomo for the incurables. There he began to serve the other patients, and in time he was entrusted with overseeing the whole hospital staff. He wished to gather people who would care for the sick not for pay but out of love for God. On the advice of his spiritual director, Saint Philip Neri, he took up studies at the Jesuit Roman College and in 1584 was ordained a priest. With his companions he served the sick in the great Roman hospital of Santo Spirito and in their homes. In his rule he asked that the sick be served with the love with which a mother nurses her only sick child.

Pope Sixtus V approved the new community in 1586 and allowed its members to wear on their habit a red cross, which is still the sign of the Camillians today. In 1591 Gregory XIV raised it to the rank of a religious order. To the three customary vows Camillus added a fourth: a vow of constant care for the sick, even those stricken with the plague. When ships carrying plague victims were held in quarantine off the port of Naples, the Camillians went on board to nurse them, and two of them paid for it with their lives. In 1607 Camillus resigned as superior general in order to give himself entirely to the sick.

To the end of his life he bore the pain of his wound and other illnesses, and yet, as long as his strength allowed, he visited the sick himself. He died in Rome on July 14, 1614, at the age of 64, and rests in the Roman church of Saint Mary Magdalene. Benedict XIV beatified him in 1742 and declared him a saint on June 29, 1746. Leo XIII named him patron of the sick and of hospitals in 1886, and Pius XI patron of nurses in 1930.