Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

Yet Aloysius asked the question. And the answer from the depths of his heart led him to walk out of the palace, give up his right to succeed his father, enter the poor life of the Jesuits, and finally bend down beside the sick and dying in the filthy streets of Rome.

From the age of four or five, little Aloysius was dressed by his father in a miniature suit of armor and helmet and taken along to army camps. The clash of swords, gunfire and military parades were the first world he knew. But he was frail, and long bouts of kidney illness in childhood soon taught him a sobering lesson: even the most powerful people on earth cannot master their own bodies.

Around the age of nine, Aloysius and his younger brother were sent to Florence to learn the manners of the nobility. At the end of 1579 he moved to Mantua; and in 1582 he went to Spain, to serve as a page at the royal court in Madrid.

Those glittering courts shone with poetry, painting and luxury, but beneath them lay hypocrisy, power struggles and dissolute living, and the young man thought hard about what life is really for. Aloysius turned more and more to silence. Devotional books, the psalms and hours of quiet prayer kindled in him a completely different ideal.

In 1580, at just twelve, Aloysius received his First Communion from the hands of the holy Archbishop Charles Borromeo himself. From then on, his bond with Jesus mattered more to him than any worldly glory or wealth.

For a father who had poured his heart and his money into preparing his eldest son to carry on the family name and bring it glory, the decision was a painful blow he could not accept. He used all his authority to forbid it, sending his son back to the noble courts of Italy in the hope that a round of lavish feasts would make him give up the idea of religious life.

Giving up a title is not simply leaving money and land behind. It meant laying down all the pride that family and society had placed on his shoulders. He chose a life in which he had to learn everything from the beginning: to sweep, to wash dishes, to obey, and to be one among his poor brothers.

His superiors wisely helped him find his way. Someone used to being severe with himself also needs to learn balance, to fit into the shared rhythm of community life and to listen to others’ guidance. Sometimes the hardest renunciation is not giving up outward possessions, but giving up one’s own idea of how to become holy. Saint Robert Bellarmine, the renowned scholar then teaching in Rome, became his understanding spiritual father through these years.

In 1589 his superiors sent Aloysius home to settle a bitter land dispute between his brother Rodolfo and the Duke of Mantua. Giving up the title had not made him indifferent to his family. With humility and the respect he had earned, he settled the quarrel and brought peace to his homeland, then returned to Rome in May 1590 to continue his theological studies.

Aloysius threw himself into the relief work with the other young religious. He went through the alleys begging alms and carried abandoned sick people on his back to the hospital. He washed festering, foul-smelling bodies, changed bandages, fed the sick spoonful by spoonful and lovingly prepared them for the last sacraments. The young man who had grown up in gilded halls now came as close as anyone could to human misery.

On March 3, 1591, Aloysius fell gravely ill. Three months of high, delirious fever wore him out completely. The one who had cared so devotedly for the sick now lay humbly in bed, letting others care for him.

In his last days, Aloysius wrote his gentle mother a letter full of faith:

“Dearest mother, do not weep... I am going ahead to wait for you in our heavenly homeland... Our love will never be lost, but will be joined forever in God.”

The son about to enter eternity was trying to comfort the mother who would remain on earth.

His body was buried in the church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome. Later his skull was brought back to Castiglione delle Stiviere and enshrined in the basilica that bears his name, his homeland’s way of welcoming home the son his vocation had kept away for so many years.

Aloysius was beatified in 1605 and canonized on December 31, 1726. The Church made him patron of Catholic youth and students around the world, and later he was also honored as patron of those who care for the victims of epidemics, a title that felt very close to home in the pandemic years just past. His feast is June 21 each year.