Saint Cajetan of Thiene

Cajetan — Gaetano Thiene, in Italian — was born in Vicenza in October 1480, to Count Gasparo and Maria da Porto. He lost his father at twelve. He studied law in Padua and took his degree in both civil and canon law in 1504, but he never worked as a lawyer: he received the tonsure right away, against the wishes of his mother, who, having already lost two sons, was counting on him to carry on the family. He went to Rome and worked there in the curia of Julius II. There he understood that the problem of the Church of his time wasn’t doctrine but the way the clergy lived, and with Gian Pietro Carafa, bishop of Chieti — the future Pope Paul IV — he founded the Clerics Regular in 1524; from the Latin name of Chieti they came to be called Theatines. They were priests who lived in community, in deep poverty, with one rule: never ask for alms, and live only on what came to them unasked. Hence the nickname he still carries: the saint of Providence. In 1527 the Sack of Rome swept them away too, and they ended up in Venice; then Cajetan went down to Naples, and in Naples he stayed until the end. He founded houses there, cared for the incurably ill, and set up the Monte di Pietà, a charitable pawn bank, to rescue the poor from the hands of loan sharks: that institution would later become one of the banks from which the Banco di Napoli was born. He died in Naples on August 7, 1547. Clement X proclaimed him a saint in 1671. If your name is Gaetano, today is your name day — and in Naples it’s still a very common name.