August 7 + Saint Cajetan

Cajetan was one of the great reformers of the Church during the period of the Reformation, remaining loyal to the Church regardless of the corruptions that led many others to abandon Her.

He was born in October 1480 into a noble Italian family, and received a rigorous education guided by his mother, following the death of his father when he was just two. His studies of canon and civil law led him to work as a jurist in the court of Pope Julius II, which he abandoned upon the Pope's death, in order to study for the priesthood.

Cajetan was ordained at the age of 36 and founded a community of priests, who lived a monastic form of poverty and prayer and lived and worked closely with the poor in order to combat the political and spiritual corruption of the times. His order, the Congregation of Clerks Regular, were called the Theatines, after the title of one of his companions who was later elected Pope Paul IV.

His concern for the poor always had a strong presence in his life, and he practiced charity constantly, whether in personal encounters or in the founding institutions such as a hospital for those with incurable diseases. He even founded a bank for the poor in order to lend money to them without the usual high interest charged by other money lenders.

In 1533 he founded one of his order's houses in Naples where he battled against the growth of the Lutheran heresy.

Worn out by the troubles he saw in his Church and his home, Cajetan fell ill. When doctors tried to get him to rest on a softer bed than the boards he slept on, Cajetan answered, "My savior died on a cross. Let me die on wood at least." He died on the Feast of the Transfiguration.