7 April is  an important day in the Camillian calendar.  In 1742 Pope Benedict XIV was the first Pope to bestow authoritativeness on, and praise, Camillus for founding  ‘new school of charity’ when writing the Bull for the beatification of Camillus de Lellis.

What Camillus did was to consecrate his life to service to the sick; ‘serve perfectly the sick’, he said, serving them ‘with all charity of the soul and the body’, doing this ‘for true love of God’, to ‘please the will of God’ and for ‘the glory of God’.

This is the true, great teaching that the ‘teacher of charity’, defined as such specifically by Pope Benedict XIV in the subsequent Bull of canonisation (29 June 1746), gave us and which we still acknowledge and share in our works of evangelisation and formation in the world of health and health care, in missions and in health-care activity and works for the least, the poorest and the sick.