Saint Camillus de Lellis, priest, who, born near Chieti in Abruzzo, from his youth followed the soldier’s life and was inclined to the vices of the age, but at last was converted. In serving the sick in the hospital for incurables he strove greatly as though serving Christ himself, and, raised to the priesthood, laid at Rome the foundations of the Congregation of Clerics Regular who minister to the sick.
Lifespan: 1550–1614
Beatified: 7 April 1742 by Pope Benedict XIV
Canonized: 29 June 1746 by Pope Benedict XIV, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican
Memoria liturgica: 14 July
To the three customary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he added a fourth: that of “perpetual bodily and spiritual assistance to the sick, even those afflicted with the plague.”
Born at Bucchianico, in the province of Chieti, on 25 May 1550, and dying in Rome on 14 July 1614, his figure is emblematically linked to the red cross that he obtained permission to wear sewn upon the religious habit, granted by Pope Sixtus V on 20 June 1586.
In particular, as Father Sanzio Cicatelli, the saint’s first biographer, recorded in 1620:
per tre ragioni piacque al padre nostro che portassimo la Croce ne’ vestimenti, tenendola per nostra impresa e insegna. La prima, per far distinzione dall’abito della Compagnia di Gesù. La seconda, per far conoscere al mondo che tutti noi segnati di questo impronto di Croce siamo come schiavi venduti e dedicati per servigio de’ poveri infermi. E la terza, per dimostrare che questa è religione di croce, cioè di morte, di patimenti e di fatica, acciò quelli che vorranno seguitar il nostro modo di vita, si presuppongano di venir ad abbracciare la Croce, di abnegar se stessi e di seguitar Gesù Cristo fino alla morte.
“For three reasons it pleased our father that we should wear the Cross upon our habit, holding it as our device and emblem. The first, to distinguish ourselves from the habit of the Society of Jesus. The second, to make known to the world that all of us marked with this imprint of the Cross are as slaves sold and dedicated to the service of the sick poor. And the third, to show that this is a religion of the cross — that is, of death, of suffering, and of toil — so that those who wish to follow our way of life may understand that they are coming to embrace the Cross, to deny themselves, and to follow Jesus Christ unto death.”
The grace of God reached Camillus in 1575. During a journey to the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo, he encountered a friar who drew him aside and said: “God is everything. The rest is nothing. One must save the soul, which does not die…” He asked to become a Capuchin, but was twice dismissed from the convent on account of a wound on his leg that had opened during his years of military campaigning. For this reason he was admitted to the Roman hospital of San Giacomo. There came the insight: to unite the discipline he had acquired as a soldier with Christian charity, giving rise to the “Ministers of the Sick.” Four vows were required of those who sought to join: obedience, poverty, chastity, and service to the sick.
He is regarded as the first great reformer of the nursing profession and of the organization of hospital care. Beyond care of the body, those who attend the sick ought, in Camillus’s view, to take responsibility for the spirit as well — something radically different from what was customary in the hospitals of his day, where the sick were left entirely to themselves. An eminently practical and simple man, by no means lacking in culture or breadth of interest, in his educational apostolate he sought no theoretical refinements. A few guiding principles sufficed. To these he joined an acute discernment of hearts, a gift with which he was exceptionally endowed, together with great common sense and paternal gentleness.