St. Camillus Comforting an Invalid (M 021)

In his youth, St. Camillus de Lellis (1550-1614) had been a soldier and had received a nasty leg wound that simply would not heal. Adjudged a hopeless case by his doctors, he moved to Rome and entered St James Hospital for The Incurable. Otherwise robust and restless, he began to help care for patients at the hospital. His attitude toward the patients, the quality of his care, and his personal piety won him the admiration of the hospital’s directors and appointment as chief hospital administrator. Though he initially faced opposition, in 1586, St. Camillus finally established a Congregation, the Fathers of a Good Death or the Order of Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick, today known as the Camilians. The Camillians ministered to the sick and dying in hospitals, on battlefields (forming the first recorded military field ambulance service), and in private homes (anticipating hospice care)—in short, wherever they found them. In addition to the three Evangelical Counsels--the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience that a religious makes—Camillians make a fourth: They vow their lives ‘to service to the sick poor, including the plague-ridden, in their corporeal and spiritual needs, even at risk to their own life’. + Here St. Camillus is depicted comforting a patient in a hospital ward. + St. Camillus is patron saint of nurses, hospitals, and the sick. + Feast: July 18 (in the United States); July 14 elsewhere + Image Credit (M 021): Detail of an antique image of St. Camillus de Lellis from an early 20th-century Italian devotional print in chromolithography, original publisher unknown, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.