St. Cajetan, Priest
Daily Prayer
Prayer O glorious St. Cajetan, you studied to be a lawyer, but when you felt that the Lord was calling you to his service, you abandoned everything and became a priest. You excelled in virtues, shunning all material rewards for your labor, helping the many unemployed people of your time. You provided loans without interest and you attracted a lot of benefactors who donated to your resources so that you could go on with your activities. Look on us with mercy. We wish to find employment that could help us and our families live with dignity. Listen to our petitions, dear saint; you who could easily give up the food on your table for the needy, bring our petitions to Jesus (here mention your petition), AMEN
Founder of the Theatines, born October, 1480 at Vicenza in Venetian territory; died at Naples in 1547. Under the care of a pious mother he passed a studious and exemplary youth, and took his degree asdoctor utriusque juris at Padua in his twenty-fourth year. In 1506 he became at Rome a prothonotaryApostolic in the court of Julius II, and took an important share in reconciling the Republic of Venicewith that pontiff. On the death of Julius in 1523 he withdrew from the court, and is credited with founding, shortly after, an association of pious priests and prelates called the Oratory of Divine Love, which spread to other Italian towns. Though remarkable for his intense love of God, he did not advance to the priesthood till 1516. Recalled to Vicenza in the following year by the death of his mother, he founded there a hospital for incurables, thus giving proof of the active charity that filled his whole life. But his zeal was more deeply moved by the spiritual diseases that, in those days of political disorder, infected the clergy of all ranks, and, like St. Augustine in earlier times, he strove to reform them by instituting a body of regular clergy, who should combine the spirit of monasticism with the exercises of the active ministry.
Returning to Rome in 1523 he laid the foundations of his new congregation, which was canonicallyerected by Clement VII in 1524. One of his four companions was Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, Bishop ofChieti (in Latin Theate), afterwards Paul IV, who was elected first superior, and from whose title arose the name Theatines. The order grew but slowly. During the sack of Rome in 1527 the Theatines, then twelve in number, escaped to Venice after enduring many outrages from the heretic invaders. ThereCajetan met St. Hieronymus Æmiliani (see SOMASCHI), whom he assisted in the establishment of hisCongregation of Clerks Regular. In 1533 Cajetan founded a house in Naples, where he was able to check the advances of Lutheranism. In 1540 he was again at Venice, whence he extended his work toVerona and Vicenza. He passed the last four years of his life, a sort of seraphic existence, at Napleswhere he died finally of grief at the discords of the city, suffering in his last moments a kind ofmystical crucifixion. He was beatified by Urban VIII in 1629, and canonized by Clement X in 1671. Hisfeast is kept on the 7th of August.
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