St. Camillus de Lellis

Who they were

Camillus was a giant of a man, six and a half feet, a mercenary soldier and a compulsive gambler who at one point lost literally everything he owned, down to his shirt, in a game. A leg wound that never healed kept landing him in Rome's hospital for incurables, where he was twice thrown out for gambling with the other patients. The conversion came at twenty-five, working construction for a monastery. He went back to the same hospital and began nursing, actually washing, feeding, staying with the dying, and was appalled enough by what passed for care that he founded an order, the Ministers of the Sick, whose members wore a red cross on the cassock and vowed to serve even the plague-stricken. They were among the first battlefield medics. His leg never healed; he served on it for forty years.

Why people turn to St. Camillus de Lellis

Both halves of his life work. The sick and their nurses have him from the second half; people inside a gambling problem have him from the first, because he was one, relapses and all.

How to ask their intercession

For a sick person: ask his prayers for them and for whoever is doing the nursing. For gambling: one day at a time, the same way he got out, and ask him to pray for the next twenty-four hours. ---