Camille de Lellis, born May 25, 1550, in Buccianico in Abruzzo (Italy) and died in Rome, July 14, 1614, is an Italian Catholic religious priest, founder of the order of the Camillians. Canonized in 1746, he is liturgically commemorated on July 14. After an incurable leg ulcer which made him encounter faith, he was a nurse in Rome. He is the founder of the order of the Camillians (regular clerics of the Infirm) and, as such, is for Catholics the protector - with John of God - of hospitals and the sick. He was the son of an officer who had served in the Neapolitan armies and the French armies. His mother died when he was still a child and his education was completely neglected. While still young, he became a soldier in the service of Venice and then Naples, until 1574, when his regiment was dissolved. During his time in service, he became an inveterate gambler to the point that his gambling losses sometimes reduced him to destitution. The kindness towards him of a Capuchin monk prompted him to request admission into this order, but he was refused. He then went to Rome, where he obtained a job at the Hospital of Saint James of the Incurables. What especially encouraged him to go there was the hope that the abscesses on his feet from which he had suffered for a long time would be cured. He was kicked out of the hospital because of his quarrelsome temperament and passion for gambling. Again he became a Venetian soldier and took part in the campaign against the Turks in 1569. After the war he was employed by the Capuchins in Manfredonia in a new building they were building. His old gambling habit continued to pursue him, until an admonition from the guardian of the convent convinced him so well that he resolved to reform. He was admitted to the order as a lay brother, but soon dismissed due to his infirmity. He went again to Rome, where he returned to the hospital where he had previously been and, after a temporary improvement in his health problems, he became a nurse there and, having won the admiration of the institution by his piety and his wisdom, he was appointed director of the hospital. His work Statue of Camille de Lellis caring for a sick person (church of Beuvry-la-Forêt) In this role, he tried to found an order of lay nurses, but the project was opposed and, on the advice of his friends, among whom his spiritual guide, Saint Philippe Néri, he resolved to become a priest. He was then thirty-two years old and began to study Latin at the Jesuit college in Rome. He then established his order, the “Fathers of the Good Death” (1585)1 and imposed on members the vow to devote themselves to the sick, even at the risk of life; their work was not limited to hospitals, but included caring for the sick in their homes. Pope Sixtus V confirmed the congregation in 1586 and decreed that there should be an election of a superior general every three years. Camille was naturally the first and after him it was Father Oppertis. Two years later a house was established in Naples and it was there that two members of the community gained the glory of being the first martyrs of charity of the congregation, by dying in a ship which had been quarantined in the port and which they had visited to care for the sick. In 1591 Gregory XIV established the congregation as a religious order, with all the privileges of beggars. She was again confirmed in this title by Clement VIII in 1592. The infirmity which had prevented Camille from entering among the Capuchins continued to afflict him for forty-six years and his other health problems contributed to making his life a series of sufferings, but he did not allow anyone to take care of him. from him and when he was barely able to stand he would get out of his bed to visit the sick. He resigned from the generalship of the order in 1607 to have more leisure for the sick and the poor. During this time he had founded numerous houses in different cities in Italy. It is said that he had the gift of miracles and prophecies. He died at the age of sixty-four while delivering an appeal