Happy "Camillus de Lellis" Day

 The Original Red Cross (of Camillus)

Saint Camillus de Lellis, M.I., (25 May 1550 – 14 July 1614) was an Italian priest who founded a religious Order dedicated to the care of the sick.

Thus De Lellis established the Order of Clerks Regular, Ministers to the Sick (abbreviated as M.I.), better known as the Camillians. His experience in wars led him to establish a group of health care workers who would assist soldiers on the battlefield. The large, red cross on their cassock remains a symbol of the Congregation today. Camillians today continue to identify themselves with this emblem on their habits, a symbol universally recognized today as the sign of charity and service. This was the original Red Cross, hundreds of years before the International Red Cross Organization was formed.

During the Battle of Canizza in 1601, while Camillians were busily occupied with the wounded, the tent in which they were tending to the sick and in which they had all of their equipment and supplies was completely destroyed and burned to the ground. Everything in the tent was destroyed except the red cross of a religious habit belonging to one of the Camillians who was ministering to the wounded on the battlefield. This event was taken by the Camillans to manifest divine approval of the Red Cross of St. Camillus.^[2]

Members of the Order also devoted themselves to victims of Bubonic plague. It was due to the efforts of the Brothers and supernatural healings by de Lellis that the people of Rome credited De Lellis with ridding the city of a great plague and the subsequent famine. For a time, he became known as the "Saint of Rome".

De Lellis' concern for the proper treatment of the sick extended to the end of their lives. He had come to be aware of the many cases of people being buried alive, due to haste, and ordered that the Brothers of his Order wait fifteen minutes past the moment when the patient seemed to have drawn his last breath, in order to avoid this.