Saint Richard Pampuri

Saint Richard Pampuri was an Italian doctor who for several years cared for the people of a rural district near Milan and then entered the Brothers Hospitallers, the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God. He died as a religious brother before he had reached the age of thirty-three. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on May 1, the day of his death.

He was born on August 2, 1897, at Trivolzio near Pavia and was baptized Erminio Filippo. He was the tenth of the eleven children of Innocenzo and Angela. His mother died when he was three, and from then on he grew up with his mother’s relatives in nearby Torrino; his father died in 1907. As a boy he wished to become a missionary priest, but because of his frail health he was dissuaded from that path. He studied medicine at the University of Pavia.

The First World War interrupted his studies. He served in the army medical service on the Italian-Austrian front, first as a sergeant and then as an officer cadet in the medical corps. John Paul II recalled that even in the trenches he was an apostle among the soldiers. During his service he contracted pleurisy, which weakened his health from then on. He graduated in medicine with the highest marks on July 6, 1921.

After a short period of practice he became the municipal doctor of Morimondo, a rural village between Milan and Pavia. He lived his profession as a service of charity and gave the poorest medicines, money, food, clothing and blankets. He belonged to the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and was a Franciscan tertiary. From his youth he was active in Catholic Action, and in Morimondo he helped to found its youth circle and became its first president. In a letter he asked his sister, a nun, to pray that he might always see the suffering Jesus in his patients, “to heal Him, to comfort Him.”

In 1927 he resigned his post, and on June 22 he entered the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God, known in Italy as the Fatebenefratelli, in Milan, where he received the name Richard. He made his novitiate in Brescia and took his religious vows on October 24, 1928. He directed the dental clinic at the Order’s hospital in Brescia, which was visited mostly by workers and the poor.

His old illness returned and developed into bronchopneumonia. On April 18, 1930, he was taken from Brescia to Milan, where he died on May 1, 1930. In a last conversation with his spiritual director he asked: “Father, how will God receive me? I have loved Him so much, and I love Him so much.” His body rests in the parish church of Trivolzio.

In 1978 the Holy See recognized his heroic virtues. John Paul II beatified him on October 4, 1981, and on November 1, 1989, the Solemnity of All Saints, he proclaimed him a saint in Saint Peter’s Basilica. The pope recalled that Richard began his path to holiness in the lay apostolate of Catholic Action, and he held him up as an example for young people, doctors and religious.