‘On the morning of 29 June, with the firing of the canons in Castel S. Angelo, the papal procession went from the Vatican Palace and, going round the obelisk, entered St. Peter’s.

The basilica was splendidly adorned and illuminated. Because of this very special occasion, the most valuable adornments and equipment that the stores of St. Peter’s had were made available. Thirty-one Cardinals and about seventy archbishops, bishops and high prelates took part in this papal procession, as well as some princes, all of the Roman nobility and various ambassadors. The people of Rome and numerous foreigners occupied the immense basilica.

A fine number of Ministers of the Sick (not less than sixty), together with the Most Reverend Superior General Fr. Costaninti and the General Consulta, took part in the event, gathered together under the grandiose standard of the Holy Founder which is entrusted to the Confraternity of the Holy Spirit in Sassia.

After the ritual prayers, and the triple invocations of the Cardinal Protector, the Vicar of Christ, going beyond the limits of the human by the majesty of the great glory and divine and infallible authority with which he felt bestowed, with a strong voice declared and established that ‘Ad lica…by the authority of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and Our…Camillus is a Saint…

     From outside responded the roar of the canons of Castel S. Angelo and the great and celebratory ringing of all the bells of Rome, which for an hour afterwards had to celebrate the glory of the new saints.

     The Papal Mass then followed…prepared by Benedict XIV himself, that is to say the Oremus proprio, the Secreta and the Post-comunio. After the Gospel, His Holiness gave a ‘most erudite homily’ in which, when speaking about Camillus, he likened him to the great figure of St. Peter because of his ‘very strong love’ for Jesus, and to that of St. Paul because like him, after being thrown to the ground on the way to Damascus, he obtained, by his meekness to the work of grace, a vase of election’.

GALLERIA FOTOGRAFICA

Selezione di quello che espresse nella “Bolla di Canonizzazione” Papa Benedetto XIV

Il sommo pontefice nella lettera indirizzata al prefetto generale dei Ministri degli Infermi, ricordando ed esaltando” l’invitto campione della carità divenuto spettacolo al mondo, agli angeli, e agli uomini” dice che la ricorrenza due volte centenaria della sua canonizzazione torna più che mai opportuna e proficua in quest’ora in cui gli uomini tutti necessitano di carità. La meditazione della vita di San Camillo, può e deve insegnare a soccorrere e confortare con la carità tanti infermi che la guerra ha moltiplicati dovunque. Se la ricostruzione non ricomincia dalla carità, se essa stessa non è carità, non può dar frutti di pace, né speranza di successo. La carità impegna tutto l’uomo. Un impegno arduo, e perciò di pochi; ma ad essi Gesù fa cuore: “Nolite timere, pusillusgrex, quia complacuit patri vestro dare vobis regnum” (Luca 12:32)

Dalla Lettera del Sommo Pontefice Pio XII per il II Centenario della Canonizzazione del  N.S.P. Camillo