Catholic Heroes… St. Camillus De Lellis
By DEB PIROCH
“If someone inspired by the Lord God wishes to exercise works of mercy, corporal and spiritual, according to our Institute, he should know that he must be dead to all the things of this world, that is to say relatives, friends, possessions, and to himself, and live only for the Crucified Christ” — St. Camillus
- + + His mother dreamt before giving birth that she would have a son, one who would lead a band of men with crosses on their shirts. She misunderstood what she saw and was afraid her son would head a gang of brigands.
St. Camillus was born in 1550 in Abruzzi, Italy, with his mother dying when he was but 12. Handed around among his relatives, he was hard to raise and neglected. But he grew to be a large man — six foot six — and became a soldier like his father, fighting Turks. He also developed an addiction, to gambling.
Two things happened that would start him on a different road: at 21 he developed an incurable leg disease and, by 25, he had gambled away every last cent and literally even the shirt on his back. For a time, he was at the San Giacomo Hospital, offering work in exchange for medical treatment of his leg. However, he soon returned to his old vice of gambling. Because he then evaded work, argued so much, and disobeyed what he was told to do, the hospital threw him out.
At the end of his resources, he went to the Capuchins, asking for work, because he had somehow been drawn toward the Franciscans. One day their guardian spoke to him in a way that touched him deep inside. It was Candlemas 1575, and he fell on his knees, weeping, and renounced his old ways. His life had changed forever.
Because of his leg condition — ulcers? pain? — he was not able to join the Capuchins. In the end he chose to help minister at the same hospital for the incurables at San Giacomo, where he had once been a patient. At this time there were no female nurses, and those who did work in hospitals often did this job as a last resort. These men included even criminals, and they hardly had the best interests of patients in mind.
Camillus started to agitate for workers who did the nursing out of charity. Over time, he worked his way up to superintendent and greatly improved conditions for the patients out of his love for them. He also became a priest on the advice of his confessor, St. Philip Neri, so he could better attend the patients’ spiritual needs. After his ordination in his early thirties, rather than return to this model, he decided it was best to start anew, against the advice of his confessor. He and two others began their own religious congregation, the Ministers of the Sick, or Camillians today, and did this work for a hospital named for the Holy Ghost.
As St. Teresa of Calcutta would do centuries later, Camillus treated everyone he met with love, seeing Christ in each face and soul. No longer did the patients and the hospital smell, but they were clean and food was good. And for those for whom there was no physical cure, he and his men absolutely saw that they received sacraments like the Eucharist regularly and Last Rites at the end.
St. Philip Neri would say later that when he saw the Camillians speaking to the dying, right next to that brother or priest he saw an angel, telling them in their ear what words of peace to offer the dying. Within ten years the hospital had to be expanded. The next one would be huge.
Before we proceed any further, it should be noted that this order embraced the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But to it they added a fourth vow related to care of the sick; they must bind themselves to care for everyone, even the most infectious and at the risk of their lives. Camillus knew that even those with the plague needed to feel the hand of God’s love caring for them in their final hours. Through the Passion on the cross, he related his own life, his calling and indeed, our own need to unite ourselves to the suffering of Jesus Christ.
Camillus lived the cross first and foremost as a sacrifice for sinners, as the manifestation of divine mercy that saves. Indeed, in another text we read: “In his mental morning prayers and again at Holy Mass, many times rivulets of tears were seen to fall from his eyes. He prayed at times with his arms fully open at the feet of the Most Holy Crucified Christ, to whose image he was greatly devoted. He used to offer often to the eternal Father the most bitter Passion of His only Son for the sins of the whole world” (unattributed text online).
When Camillus was struggling earlier on, at a loss how to proceed when no order would take him before he became a priest, he had the first of two visions of the Crucified Christ. This was on the Assumption 1582, when he was affirmed in his calling to help the sick: He saw he was to “institute a Company of pious and good men who not for gain but willingly and for love of God would serve Him with that charity and lovingness that mothers usually have for their sick children.”
In the other vision Christ came alive on the cross and spoke directly to him, saying: “What’s wrong, timid one? Follow this undertaking and I will help you, given that this work is mine and not yours.” The band of men allegedly dreamt of by Camillus’ mother had come to pass, for they would all wear a cassock with a large red cross on it, so all would know they were there to help the sick. This was three centuries before the Red Cross began using the same idea.
The Roman hospital was gigantic in that the largest ward alone handled 300 patients. By one estimate, by Fr. John Patrick Donnelly, SJ, the load was so heavy the hospital would have seen roughly 10,000 patients annually. Consider: The next plague that hit hard in the city was in 1591; there were thousands of ill and dying. And Camillus was clever enough to realize that many of these were sick at home, and his orders to his growing community of men were to seek them out and care for the ill in their homes if necessary. By 1586 Pope Sixtus V had given informal approval to the community, formal approval being granted in 1591 by Pope Gregory XIV.
In the course of his work, Camillus discovered to his horror that the sheet was drawn over patients’ faces sometimes too early. In other words, some were prematurely declared dead and buried alive. After that, his orders were that his men were always to stay and pray 15 minutes beside any person after an apparent death, before departing.
Theirs was also the first “field nursing” in that in 1595 and 1601 his men traveled to Hungary and Russia, to nurse men on the battlefield, just as Florence Nightingale would bring nursing to the front many years later with female nurses in the Victorian era. And when another new hospital was founded 1588 in Naples, and ships there were quarantined, so his men went aboard to nurse those there with the plague. Two of his men died: These were his order’s first martyrs. Every year the Camillians pray on a May 25th feast for all of its martyrs who have died, ministering to the sick. Camillus knew what it was to be sick himself; he had suffered with his own leg ailment for nearly half a century.
Eventually even the health of Camillus would start to fail, and he would visit all his communities — by now eight hospitals in ten cities — before he retired 1607. Instead of two helpers, there were now 242, and 80 more novices. And today? The Camillians are in 42 countries.
A statue of St. Camillus stands at St. Peter’s. His bones are buried under the altar of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rome, and the relic of his large heart is encased by the Camillians in a reliquary. And in looking thereon we know indeed: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
(Camillus is the patron saint of nursing and hospitals, with a feast day of July 18.)