Saint Camillus de Lellis, Priest

Camillus de Lellis was born in 1550 in the Abruzzi. A very tall man, he became a soldier, fighting for Venice against the Turks, and a gambler; by 1574 he had lost everything, even the shirt off his back. Working as a laborer for the Capuchins at Manfredonia, he was moved by a friar’s words and changed his life in 1575.

A sore on his leg that would not heal brought him several times to the hospital of San Giacomo in Rome, where he became a servant and then master of the house, and saw how badly the sick were treated. Ordained a priest in 1584, he founded the Ministers of the Sick, who wear a red cross on their habit and also cared for the plague-stricken and for wounded soldiers. He died in Rome on 14 July 1614.