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Camillus de Lellis

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Camillus de Lellis
Born 25 May 1550, Bucchianico, Kingdom of Naples
Died 14 July 1614, Rome, Papal States
State of life Priest, nurse, hospital reformer, and religious founder
Religious institute Ministers of the Sick (Camillians) (M.I.)
Ecclesial status Saint; canonized on 29 June 1746
Recognition Beatified in 1742; canonized by Benedict XIV in 1746
General Roman Calendar 14 July — Optional Memorial
Dies natalis 14 July 1614

Camillus de Lellis was an Italian priest and founder of the Ministers of the Sick, the Camillians, who reformed care of patients by serving the whole person as an image of the suffering Christ.

Overview

Camillus de Lellis, M.I., (25 May 1550 – 14 July 1614) was an Italian Catholic priest who founded the Camillians, a religious order dedicated to the care of the sick. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV in the year 1742, and canonized by him four years later in 1746. De Lellis is the patron saint of the sick, hospitals, nurses and physicians. His assistance is also invoked against gambling.

Life

Origins and formation

Camillus was born at Bucchianico on 25 May 1550. His mother died while he was young, and he followed his father into soldiering. A persistent wound in his leg brought him repeatedly to the Hospital of Saint James in Rome, where he also worked as a servant but was dismissed amid gambling and an unstable life. After military service and deepening addiction, he worked for Capuchin friars at Manfredonia. A conversion on 2 February 1575 redirected him toward God. He attempted Capuchin life, but the incurable leg wound prevented permanent admission. Returning to Saint James, Camillus learned the needs of the sick from within their vulnerability. His history should not be reduced to a moral fable about gambling: grace worked through relapse, illness, labor, friendship, discipline, and the practical acquisition of nursing competence.[1]

Ministry and historical setting

Camillus became superintendent at Saint James and gathered men willing to care for patients with reverence rather than treat hospital service as menial employment. Philip Neri guided him spiritually and initially questioned whether priesthood would distract from bedside work. Camillus nevertheless studied, was ordained in 1584, and formed the Company of the Servants of the Sick. Pope Sixtus V approved it in 1586; Gregory XIV raised it to a religious order in 1591. The members added a fourth vow to serve the sick even at risk to their own lives. Wearing a large red cross, they nursed in hospitals, homes, battlefields, plague districts, and ships. Camillus developed standards for cleanliness, nutrition, record keeping, respectful handling of bodies, and continuous attendance. He bore painful illness while governing and died in Rome on 14 July 1614.

Teaching and Christian witness

Doctrine and spirituality

Camillus taught his companions to look upon a sick person as upon Christ and even to ask what service a loving mother would give an only child. This sacramental imagination did not replace clinical skill; it demanded greater attention to the body, speech, fear, family, conscience, and final spiritual needs of the patient. The works of mercy and professional competence belong together. His red cross predates and is historically distinct from the modern International Red Cross, despite a visual resemblance. The Camillian fourth vow dramatizes charity during contagion, but it does not excuse reckless disregard for infection control or public-health obligations. Catholic health care honors Camillus by combining prayer and the sacraments with evidence-based medicine, informed consent, privacy, just access, and special protection for persons whose illness makes them dependent.

History, tradition, and evidence

Early lives recount Camillus recognizing Christ’s face in patients, extraordinary providence during epidemics, and words heard from a crucifix. Such material belongs to the tradition received around him and can be told when attributed. Canonization does not make every hospital anecdote a medical record or every reported locution binding revelation. The exact development of nursing practices also involved many workers, women’s communities, civic hospitals, and other reformers; Camillus should not be credited as the sole inventor of modern nursing. His own temper, administrative conflicts, and difficulty governing a fast-growing institute form part of a truthful portrait. Holiness did not erase disability or personality overnight. It converted them through sustained repentance into compassion, organizational reform, and an ecclesially stable service of the sick.

Ecclesial recognition and cult

Recognition and present status

Camillus’s order and the patients it served preserved a strong reputation for holiness after his death. Pope Benedict XIV beatified him on 7 April 1742 and canonized him on 29 June 1746. Pope Leo XIII later declared Camillus, together with John of God, a patron of hospitals and the sick, and Pius XI named both patrons of nurses and nursing associations. His exact status is Saint and religious founder; M.I. identifies the Ministers of the Sick, commonly called Camillians. Patronal decrees express an ecclesially recognized relationship to health-care ministry but are not additional levels above sainthood. Canonization authorizes public veneration, while current Camillian practice remains governed by approved constitutions, professional standards, safeguarding, and the Church’s moral teaching.[2]

Liturgy and devotion

The General Roman Calendar assigns Saint Camillus de Lellis, Priest, an Optional Memorial on 14 July, his dies natalis. It yields to any Sunday, solemnity, feast, or celebration of higher precedence. The Camillian family and local calendars may observe the founder with an approved stronger rank. The liturgical title Priest does not exhaust his importance as nurse, disabled patient, convert, and founder. Canonization authorizes public cult throughout the Church and the proper veneration of authenticated relics. Hospitals and parishes fittingly mark the day with Mass where permitted, prayer for patients and caregivers, reception of the Anointing of the Sick under its proper conditions, and concrete works supporting ethical, competent, and compassionate care rather than devotional claims that compete with medical treatment.

Early life

Camillus de Lellis was born on 25 May 1550 at Bucchianico (now in Abruzzo, then part of the Kingdom of Naples). His mother, Camilla Compelli de Laureto, was nearly sixty[3] when she gave birth to him. His father was an officer in both the Neapolitan and French royal armies[4] and was seldom home. De Lellis had his father's temper and, due to his mother's age and retiring nature, she felt unable to control him as he grew up. She died in 1562. As a consequence he grew up neglected by the family members who took him in after her death. Tall for his age, at the age of thirteen he began to accompany his father from one military camp to another. At sixteen, De Lellis joined his father in the Venetian army and fought in a war against the Turks.[5]

After a number of years of military service, his regiment was disbanded in 1575. He entered Rome's San Giacomo Hospital for treatment, but was eventually turned out of the hospital because of his quarrelsome attitude. Having gambled away all his possessions, De Lellis took work as a laborer at the Capuchin friary at Manfredonia;[6] he was constantly plagued, however, by a leg wound he received while in the army, which would not heal. Despite his aggressive nature and excessive gambling, the guardian of the friary saw a better side to his nature, and continually tried to bring that out in him.[7] Eventually the friar's exhortations penetrated his heart and he had a religious conversion in 1575. He then entered the novitiate of the Capuchin friars. His leg wound, however, had continued to plague him and was declared incurable by the physicians, thus he was denied admission to that Order.[5]

He then moved to Rome where he returned to San Giacomo degli Incurabili and became a caregiver at the hospital to pay for his stay. He eventually became Superintendent.[6] He began to put things in order. In the meantime, he continued to follow a strict ascetic life, performing many penances, such as constant wearing of a hairshirt. He took as his spiritual director and confessor the popular local priest, Philip Neri, who was himself to found a religious congregation named the Congregation of the Oratory and be declared a saint.[4]

De Lellis monitored purchases, argued with tradesmen, and returned consignments of defective goods. He began to observe the poor attention the sick received from the staff of the hospital. He was led to invite a group of pious men to express their faith through the care of the patients at the hospital. Eventually he felt called to establish a religious community for this purpose, and that he should seek Holy Orders for this task. Neri, his confessor, gave him approval for this endeavor, and a wealthy donor provided him with the income necessary to undertake his seminary studies.

He was ordained at the age of thirty-four on Pentecost of 1584 by Lord Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St Asaph, Wales, and the last surviving Catholic bishop of Great Britain.

Founder

Thus De Lellis established the Order of Clerks Regular, Ministers of the Infirm (abbreviated as M.I.), better known as the Camillians. His experience in wars led him to establish a group of health care workers who would assist soldiers on the battlefield. The large red cross on their cassock remains a symbol of the Congregation today, worn on their habits, today a universal symbol of charity and service. In 1585 his friends hired a large house for the group, where he taught them the basics of nursing care.

In 1586 Pope Sixtus V gave the group formal recognition as a congregation[4] and assigned them the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rome, which they still maintain.

De Lellis' concern for the proper treatment of the sick extended to the end of their lives. He had come to be aware of the many cases of people being buried alive, due to haste, and ordered that the Brothers of his Order wait fifteen minutes past the moment when the patient seemed to have drawn his last breath, in order to avoid this.[7]

Expansion

In 1588 he was invited to Naples, and with twelve companions founded there a new house. Certain galleys having the plague on board were forbidden to enter the harbour. The pious Servants of the sick (for that was the name they took) went on board, and attended them; on which occasion two of their number died of the pestilence. Camillus showed a like charity in Rome when a pestilential fever swept off great numbers, and again when that city was visited by a violent famine.

Pope Gregory XIV raised the Congregation to the status of an Order, equivalent with the mendicant orders, in 1591. At that time they established a fourth religious vow unique to their Order: “to serve the sick, even with danger to one's own life."[8]

In 1594 De Lellis led his religious to Milan where they attended to the sick of the Ca' Granda, the main hospital of the city. During the Battle of Canizza in 1601, while Camillians were helping with the wounded, the tent in which they were tending to the sick and in which they had all of their equipment and supplies was completely destroyed and burned to the ground. Everything in the tent was destroyed except the red cross of a religious habit belonging to one of the Camillians who was ministering to the wounded on the battlefield. This event was taken by the Camillans to manifest divine approval of the Red Cross of St. Camillus.[9]

Throughout his life De Lellis' ailments caused him suffering, but he allowed no one to wait on him and would crawl to visit the sick when unable to stand and walk.[4] It is said that Camillus possessed the gifts of healing and prophecy. He resigned as Superior General of the Order in 1607, but continued to serve as Vicar General of the Order. By that time, communities of the Order had spread all throughout Italy and as far as Hungary. He assisted in a General Chapter of the Order in 1613, after which he accompanied the new Superior General on an inspection tour of all the hospitals of the Order in Italy. In the course of that tour, he fell ill. He died in Rome in 1614, and was entombed at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

Veneration

De Lellis was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV in the year 1742,[10] and canonized by him four years later in 1746.

In 1886, Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him patron of all hospitals and of the sick.[6] In 1930, Pope Pius XI named him co-patron, with Saint John of God of nurses and nursing associations.[10] His assistance is also invoked against gambling.

His mortal remains are located in the altar in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rome, along with several of his relics. Also on display is the Cross which allegedly spoke to Camillus, and asked him, "Why are you afraid? Do you not realize that this is not your work but mine?" which has become the motto associated with De Lellis, as well as healthcare workers who were inspired by him.

The Congregation of the Servants of the Sick of St Camillus, the Daughters of St. Camillus, the Secular Institutes of Missionaries of the Sick Christ Our Hope, of the Kamillianische Schwestern (Camillan Sisters) and of the Lay Camillian Family, were born later of the charism and spirituality of De Lellis.

Camillus' feast day was originally inserted in the General Roman Calendar in 1762 for celebration on 18 July, since 14 July, the day of his death, was at that time taken by the feast of Saint Bonaventure. It was then given the rank of Double; later, it was changed in 1960 to that of "Third-Class Feast",[11] and in the liturgical changes of 1969 to that of an optional "Memorial", when it was also moved to the anniversary of his death, 14 July. In the U.S.A. it is currently an optional Memorial celebrated on 18 July, because on 14 July there is the Memorial of Kateri Tekakwitha.

Camillus is depicted ministering to the sick.[12]

Commemoration

Camillus is honoured in the names of: St. Camillus, a church in the village of Farrelton, Quebec

See also

References

  1. Back to citation Dicastery profile of Saint Camillus de Lellis — Competent dicastery biography recording Camillus’s soldiering and gambling, conversion, chronic wound, hospital reform, priesthood, foundation of the Ministers of the Sick, death, beatification, and canonization.
  2. Back to citation Pope Francis on the charism of Saint Camillus — Official Angelus reflection near Camillus’s fourth centenary emphasizing his conversion, recognition of Christ in the sick, foundation, red-cross sign, and maternal tenderness in health care.
  3. Back to citation Martindale, C.C. (1946). Life of Saint Camillus. New York: Sheed and Ward. p. 4.
  4. Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 Back to citation occurrence 4.2 Back to citation occurrence 4.3 Campbell, Thomas. "St. Camillus de Lellis." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 5 May 2018
  5. Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 Sicari, Antonio. Ritratti de Santi, Jaca
  6. Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 Back to citation occurrence 6.2 "Saint Camillus de Lellis". Franciscan Media. 2016-07-18. Archived from the original on 2020-07-20. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  7. Back to citation occurrence 7.0 Back to citation occurrence 7.1 "St. Camillus de Lellis". olrl.org. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  8. Back to citation Website of the Camillian Fathers
  9. Back to citation "The Community". 2011-10-22. Archived from the original on 2011-10-22. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  10. Back to citation occurrence 10.0 Back to citation occurrence 10.1 McKeown, Jonah. "St. Camillus de Lellis: Patron saint of hospitals, nurses, and the sick", Catholic News Agency, April 18, 2020
  11. Back to citation General Roman Calendar of 1960
  12. Back to citation Husenbeth, Frederick Charles. Emblems of the Saints, Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860 p. 32
  13. Back to citation "About Us | The Centers at St. Camillus". Retrieved 2019-02-10.
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