On the occasion of the celebrations for the fourth centenary of the death of St. Camillus, on Sunday 6 July Cardinal Angelo Scola presided over a solemn celebration of the Eucharist at the St. Camillus Sanctuary of Milan. The Camillians have been in Milan since 1594, a decision taken by St. Camillus himself, and at the outset they were involved in providing direct service to the sick in the ‘Cà Granda’ Hospital.

In his homily the Cardinal remembered the figure of St. Camillus, ‘a complete and successful man who with his creative dedication to care reinvented the initial style of the modern hospital’.

Starting with one of the most famous phrases of St. Camillus, ‘more heart in those hands’, Scola emphasised that today ‘those hands hold the neurosciences, biotechnologies, all the new discoveries and opportunities to act on the human body. But if they do not contain that ‘more love’ that St. Camillus spoke about, we, in our daily experiences, will lose the ultimate meaning and the root of what we do’.

When thanking the camillians for their valuable work, Msgr. Scola extended his gratitude ‘to all health-care workers who work wonders every day, all the associations and the whole of the world of voluntary work who are involved in a  work – that involving care –  and a work charged with love, that is one of the highest expressions of civilisation of a country, of a city or of an epoch’.

When ending his homily, Cardinal Scola urged the Camillians to follow the words of their Founder: ‘The sick poor, said St. Camillus, are the pupil and heart of God, and what they did for those poor people they did for God’.

Look here at the video of the homily

Look here at the photographc gallery

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