St. Camillus: mercy at the hospital bed

Camillus de Lellis spent his youth gambling and serving as a soldier. Encounters with the Capuchin friars helped turn his life toward God in 1575. A wound that would not heal repeatedly brought him to hospital. There, among people enduring illness and neglect, he found the service to which he would devote himself.

Camillus founded the Ministers of the Sick, known as the Camillians. He wanted patients to receive both skilled care and personal affection. John Paul II describes his attention to the whole person: physical needs, emotions, relationships, and spiritual life. In Camillus’s service, prayer and careful nursing belonged together at the same bedside.

His return became a way of treating another person. The sick were to be received with dignity, including those who were poor or abandoned. We can pray with that example by asking whose needs we have stopped noticing, and what patient, practical care we can offer with the time and ability we actually have.