Camillus de Lellis
Saint Camillus de Lellis is patron of nurses, the sick, and hospitals because he reinvented their care from within: a former soldier nursing his own incurable leg wound at Rome’s San Giacomo hospital, he was so appalled by the neglect of the dying that he founded the Camillians — the “Ministers of the Sick” — and pioneered fresh air, isolation of contagious patients, proper diet, and tender attendance at the deathbed. His red cross worn on the cassock became the emblem of devoted nursing. He is patron of gamblers in the precise sense of one who escaped them: in his reckless youth he gambled away even the shirt off his back, and his conversion makes him the natural intercessor for those bound by that addiction.
Saint Camillus de Lellis was an Italian priest who founded the Camillians, a religious order dedicated to the care of the sick. Born in 1550, he was a soldier and gambler before his conversion. He pioneered modern nursing practices, including isolation of infectious patients and fresh air in hospital wards. He is a patron saint of nurses and the sick.
