Saint Pantaleon

Pantaleon was the son of Eustorgius, a very wealthy man from Nicomedia, and of Eubula, who had raised him a Christian. As a young man he drifted away from the faith, studied medicine and rose to become the personal physician of the caesar Galerius. He came back to the faith thanks to the priest Hermolaus. When his father died he inherited a fortune and began treating the poor for free — which, besides being generous, was ruinous for the competition. It was some of his colleagues who, out of envy, denounced him during the persecution of Diocletian. The emperor, the story says, would have liked to spare him and tried to persuade him to renounce his faith. Pantaleon openly professed it, and was killed in Nicomedia on July 27, 305. His name in Greek is Panteleimon, “the one who has compassion for all,” and that is the name the Eastern Churches venerate him by; there he is one of the best-loved saints. He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, invoked against wasting diseases, and he is patron of physicians together with Cosmas and Damian. Vials of his blood are kept in several places, and in Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast, where he is patron saint, the liquefaction that takes place on July 27 draws huge crowds every year — as happens in Naples with San Gennaro. If your name is Pantaleo or Pantaleone, today is your name day.