St. Aloysius Gonzaga

St. Aloysius Gonzaga was born on March 9, 1568, at Castiglione delle Stiviere in northern Italy, the eldest son of a marquis and heir to a princely inheritance. Raised amid the courts of Renaissance Italy and Spain — worlds of wealth, intrigue, and ambition — the boy turned instead to prayer and penance with remarkable seriousness. He made a private vow of virginity at an early age, and at about twelve he received his First Holy Communion from St. Charles Borromeo, the great reforming archbishop of Milan. Devotion to the Eucharist remained at the heart of his short life. Resolved to become a Jesuit, Aloysius endured years of opposition from his father before he was permitted to renounce his inheritance in favor of his brother. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1585, at seventeen. His superiors, seeing his health was fragile and his austerities extreme, moderated his penances and directed him toward study and community life; among his spiritual directors was St. Robert Bellarmine, who later testified to his sanctity. When plague struck Rome in 1591, the Jesuits opened a hospital for its victims, and Aloysius begged to serve there. He washed and fed the sick and carried the dying in from the streets, until he contracted the disease himself. After a long decline borne with serenity, he died on June 21, 1591, at the age of twenty-three, his eyes fixed on the crucifix and the name of Jesus on his lips. Aloysius was beatified in 1605 and canonized in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII, who also proposed him to the young as a model; in 1926 Pope Pius XI declared him patron of Christian youth. He is invoked today by students and young people, and — because he died caring for the plague-stricken — by those who suffer from epidemics and by their caregivers. His relics rest beneath an altar in the Church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome, near the room where he died, and his memorial is celebrated on June 21.