The Saint of the First Red Cross
How Camillus of Lellis Became an Ambassador of Mercy
By: Louise Perrotta
If you’ve ever been tempted to think that you’re not cut out for sanctity, consider the case of Camillus of Lellis. Here is a saint—the patron of hospitals, health care workers, and the sick—whose burning love for God effected a widespread reform of patient care. “I’ll never forget the sight,” wrote one person who saw six-foot-six Camillus in action. “When he was attending a sick person, he looked like a hen with her chicks or like a mother at her child’s bedside.”
And yet for the first third of his life, nothing about Camillus suggested a saint in the making. The man who would become such a...
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