In 1959, a year after his ordination, Antonio was invited to Taiwan to work in a small dispensary on the island of Penghu (Pescadores) while studying Taiwanese. The Camillian missionaries had just set up their mission in Taiwan, using priests thrown of China by Mao.
Fr Antonio was impressed by the people’s extreme poverty and by the shortage of medical care so in 1966 he decided to return to Italy to graduate in medicine, specialising in paediatrics.
In 1977, he transferred to Luodong on the eastern coast of the island to live among Chinese and extremely poor tribal people. If any of them got sick or needed specialist care (and could afford it), they would need to go to Taipei, undergoing a journey of at least eight hours. Fr Antonio soon became the director of a small Camillian hospital, St Mary’s, and he expanded it until it became one of the best on the island, capable of offering specialist treatment in all branches of medicine. Every day, at least 1,500 people are treated in the clinic. “At first, this hospital,” said Fr Giuseppe, “was one of the few health structures that treated poor people for free. This has increased the Taiwanese people’s respect for Catholicism. Some years ago, to enlarge some sections, we launched an appeal: many people who were treated for free 50 years ago have now made a position for themselves. They did not forget and helped us very much. And the majority of these donors are not Christian.”
Fr Antonio is much loved because being a paediatrician, he helped many children as they were growing up. With him, the Camillians also opened departments for the care of people with disabilities and the terminally ill. In 1996, the government of Taiwan conferred upon him the “Good Doctor” award.
Since 2000, Fr Antonio has no longer been able to walk because of his paralysis but his life witness still moves many Taiwanese. Chen Yan, a Buddhist teacher, chairman of the charitable Tzu Chi Foundation of Hualian, often quotes Fr Antonio as a model of dedication. “Fr Didoné,” he wrote, “truly dedicated his whole life to medical service in Taiwan… the seeds of love we sow and nurture to grow will one day become trees so large that they will offer shade and rest to many people.”
The website of the Camillian Order. (The Congregation of the Servants of the Sick)
His mother was quite old – almost 60 – when he was born, and died when he was twelve.
Camillus’ father, Giovanni de Lellis, an army captain, paid no attention to his wife’s dreams. But the wild boyhood of his son, given over to gambling and rowdy companions seems to have supported those fears. Camillus followed his father in a military career, and over the course of many years, lived recklessly with a compulsion for gambling. A leg injury resulting in numerous hospitalizations caused him a great deal of grief.
He resigned himself to a life as a construction worker at the monastery of the Capuchins in Manfredonia, Italy, after leaving the military. The Friars gradually discovered the natural goodness of the man beneath the rough exterior, and in 1575, at the age of 25, Camillus experienced a spiritual conversion and resolved to reform his life and dedicate himself to the service of God.
Still afflicted by his leg wound, Camillus de Lellis entered St. James’ Hospital in Rome, where he would live and work among his brothers, the sick. One night he had the inspiration to assemble a group of good men willing to dedicate themselves to the sick. Later on he took up studies for the priesthood and led an army of “Servants of the Sick” against the plague and epidemics that infested Rome. Ordained at the age of 34, Camillus might be what we today sometimes refer to as a “delayed vocation"
Camillus chose a red cross as the distinguishing badge for the members of his Order to wear upon their black cassocks, and he taught his volunteers that the hospital was a house of God, a garden where the voices of the sick were music from heaven. Once when he was discouraged, he heard the consoling words from the crucifix, “This is my work, not yours”.
After leading the movement throughout Italy, Camillus died on July 14, 1614. In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV proclaimed Camillus de Lellis blessed; in 1746 he canonized him, calling him the “Founder of a new school of charity”.
This new school saw the sick in a new light. In Camillus’ own words, “The poor and the sick are the heart of God. In serving them, we serve Jesus the Christ.” Wherever the sick person was, there God was, and it became a place of celebration. The bed of the sick became an altar, the hospital a church.
And if you really want to get the goods on St. Camillus, read this chapter on him from the marvelous Saints for Sinners by Alban Goodier, S.J.
Once this willpower had been gained the rest of the growth of Camillus is comparatively easy to explain. He was a soldier by profession, for whom life had no surprises, to whom no degree of degradation came as a shock; he had gone through the worst and he knew. But he also knew that however low a man may fall he remains still a man; when he himself had been at his lowest he had never quite lost the memory of better things, nor the vague desire that he might be other than he was. From his own experience he was sure that the most wretched of men was more to be pitied than to be condemned; and if to be pitied, then to be helped if that was possible. With this knowledge, burnt into his soul during ten bitter years, and with the will now developed to act, the hero latent in Camillus began to appear. Nothing could stop him; not the anxious warning of a saint, not the discouragement of religious superiors, not the appeals of seculars who bade him be content with the good he was doing, not his own want of education, which seemed to exclude all possibility of the priesthood, not his naturally passionate nature, signs of which are manifest in him to the end. Like other saints, he began with nothing; as with them, the bread he gave multiplied within his hands; even more than has been the case with most saints, the stream he has set flowing has not been confined within the limits of a religious Order, but has overflowed its banks, and has materially affected the whole of our civilization.
Mercenary, gambler, hot-tempered and willful…saint. This is our mission as disciples of Jesus – to let God take us and mold us. To never fall into despair and believe that it is too late, we are too bad, our past is too weighty. God does not care. He can take any of us, mold us, shape us and strengthen us to serve. He is, after all…God.
One is struck, once again, as one usually is in the story of a-borning religious orders, of the struggle to do so. Even St. Philip Neri discouraged Camillus, he struggled to find a home among various types of Franciscans, and there many questions and doubts about what he had set his mind to do. But emboldened by God and by the presence of Christ in the sick and dying, he perservered.
The history of the Church is one of growth, reform and creativity. Don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different. Sometimes it can seem confusing, even in the modern age in which new movements are popping up all the time, old religious orders are dying, struggling and trying to reform. How do we discern the Spirit in all of that? – a frequent question over the past few decades and one used to excuse quite a lot. It seems to me to be fairly simple.
If the reform, creativity or newness is focused on losing more of ourselves so that we might serve those most in need – that’s a good sign. But if the "reform" is all about us, our personal fulfillment, us finding a satisfying place in the Church – not so great. Perhaps in need of a tweak or a nudge in another, more sacrificial direction in which our own "need" to find ourselves or "live our full potential" is laid at the feet of the poor.
Perhaps.
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