Saint Cajetan

Priest, Founder of the Theatines
(1480–1547)

Saint Cajetan was born in 1480 at Vicenza in northern Italy, into a noble family that had served the Republic of Venice with distinction. He was educated at the University of Padua, where he earned doctorates in both civil and canon law, and he then entered the service of Pope Julius II as a secretary, later serving under Leo X. He was ordained a priest around 1516, and the contrast between the splendour of the Renaissance papacy and the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ moved him to seek a more radical form of Christian life.

He joined the Oratory of Divine Love in Rome, a society of clergy and laymen dedicated to prayer and works of charity, and there met like-minded souls who shared his desire for the reform of the Church from within. In 1524 he co-founded, together with Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV, the Congregation of Clerks Regular, known as the Theatines from the Latin name of Carafa's see of Chieti. This was the first of the new congregations of clerks regular that would characterise the Catholic Reform.

The Theatines lived in apostolic poverty, refusing fixed revenues and trusting entirely to divine providence for their support, while devoting themselves to preaching, the sacraments, and the care of the sick and poor. Cajetan himself established hospitals for incurables, founded pawnshops to rescue the poor from usurers, and worked among the sick in Naples with heroic dedication during outbreaks of plague.

When Rome was sacked by the troops of Charles V in 1527, Cajetan was seized and tortured by soldiers demanding money he did not possess. He accepted this suffering as a sharing in the Passion of Christ. He spent his later years in Naples and Venice, always seeking the most abandoned souls and the most difficult charitable works. He died on August 7, 1547, and was canonised by Clement X in 1671. His feast is celebrated on August 7th.