Cajetan of Thiene

Born in 1480 at Vicenza into a noble family, a doctor of civil and canon law at Padua, he worked in the Roman curia before being ordained priest at thirty-six. He then attached himself to the hospitals for incurables at Venice and Vicenza, nursing with his own hands the sick whom others refused. In 1524, with Gian Pietro Carafa, the future pope Paul IV, he founded at Rome the order of Clerks Regular, called Theatines: priests living in community under vows, without revenues, without begging, relying on providence alone — an austerity that set them apart from the mendicant orders as much as from the secular clergy of the day. The sack of Rome in 1527 dispersed the house; he fell back on Venice, then Naples. There he promoted the monti di pietà, pawnshops lending at moderate rates to pull the poor out of the hands of usurers. He died at Naples in 1547. Canonised in 1671, he is commemorated on 7 August.