St. Cajetan

Who they were

Cajetan was a lawyer and papal diplomat from Vicenza who left the career to be ordained, and gave the rest of his life to two problems: a clergy that had gone soft, and a poor that had gone hungry. For the first he co-founded the Theatines, priests vowed to own nothing and beg nothing, trusting Providence alone for support. For the second he founded, in Naples, a *monte di pietà*, a nonprofit lender against small pledges, created explicitly to put the loan sharks out of business, which survived into modern times as the Bank of Naples. He worked in hospitals for the incurable with his own hands and died at Naples in 1547, worn out, during a civil disturbance he had tried to calm. In Argentina and across Latin America, where devotion to him is enormous, the crowds at his shrine every August 7 are largely people out of work.

Why people turn to St. Cajetan

Bread and work, the two words on the devotion. He is the saint of the résumé that gets no reply, the layoff at fifty-five, and the family math that stops working.

How to ask their intercession

Name the situation and the number of months. Ask his prayers for the next interview and for daily bread in the meantime, his own order's radical dependence makes him a specialist in "we do not know where it comes from yet." ---