St. Camillus de Lellis
Born: May 25, 1550
Died: July 14, 1614
Feast Day: July 14
Patron of: people who are sick, hospitals, nurses and physicians
Camillus de Lellis had what you might kindly call a checkered career. He spent the first half of his life losing the shirt off his back and the second half giving away shirts to other people who had lost theirs.
In the centuries before anyone knew anything about gambling addiction, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Camillus was hooked. Born in Italy in 1550, he learned the trade at the feet of his roustabout father; the pair spent several years as soldiers of fortune, often getting themselves thrown out of camp for starting fights over gambling.
In a fit of remorse after his father’s death, Camillus tried to join the Franciscans. Suspicious of his newfound fervor, and unable to admit him because of a running sore on his leg, they gently sent him on his way. He then offered his services at a hospital in Rome in exchange for medical care for his leg. But after some months of good work, he bought a pack of cards and shortly thereafter was thrown out for gambling and starting quarrels among the staff. Penniless, he began gambling his way around Italy. At least once he was reduced to betting—and losing—the shirt off his back.
After a few years of this sordid life, he was so broke that he took a job at a monastery being built in Manfredonia. As an unskilled laborer, he was reduced to driving the donkeys that carried the building stones. It was dusty and degrading, but Camillus kept at it, much to the amusement of his gambling colleagues. He found that hard work kept the gambling urge at bay. And slowly he found he wanted to make a new start.
He tried again to enter the Franciscans, but they still refused him because of his diseased leg. So back he went to the hospital of San Giacomo in Rome, where he served for five years, finally becoming superintendent of the hospital. He saw firsthand the lackluster and indifferent care given to the patients. Gathering several men who felt as he did, he formed a congregation to care for the sick. Camillus himself studied for the priesthood so he could be of more spiritual help to those he cared for; to do so, this six-footer even survived the humbling experience of learning his Latin in school alongside the tiny schoolboys of Rome.
After his ordination, Camillus set up a house for his congregation in the roughest section of Rome. To do so defied the advice of his spiritual director, Saint Philip Neri. Neri feared that the new surroundings might revive Camillus' old temptation, according to biographer Alban Goodier, S.J. in Saints Are Not Sad. But Camillus had decided to go where he was most needed: not in hospitals, but in the homes of the poor, in the neighborhoods where people died of the plague, in prisons, on battlefields, and among the dying. The brothers wore red crosses on their cassocks so they might be spotted during battle—an early predecessor of the Red Cross.
When the poor came to call, Camillus' pockets were never empty. Remembering his own failings, he gave generously even when the recipients turned around and gambled away the clothes they had just received. And Camillus never waited for the poor to come to him: He knew the slums of Rome like the back of his hand.
Camillus was canonized in 1746 and is patron saint of the sick and of nurses. Thank goodness he never caught sight of Las Vegas.
Originally published in Salt magazine, ©Claretian Publications.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
