Patron Saint of Nurses
St. Camillus de Lellis, feast day July 14
The patron saints of nurses are St. Camillus de Lellis, whose feast is July 14, and St. John of God, named co-patrons of nurses by Pope Pius XI in 1930; Pope Leo XIII had made Camillus patron of hospitals and the sick in 1886. St. Agatha is also invoked. AngelGuard explains why more than one answer is correct.
Quick facts
Why St. Camillus de Lellis?
This is a patronage with several genuine answers, and pages that give only one are simplifying.
Camillus de Lellis is the strongest. He was a former soldier and compulsive gambler with a leg wound that never properly healed, who ended up working in the hospital that had once turned him away as a patient. He founded an order to care for the sick, insisted his men serve plague victims and the dying when others would not, and had them wear a red cross on their habits, centuries before that symbol meant what it means now. Pope Leo XIII formally named him patron of the sick and of hospitals, and Pius XI extended it to nurses.
St. John of God, who founded a hospitaller order after his own period of mental collapse, shares the patronage of hospitals and nurses and is often named alongside him.
St. Agatha appears in this list for a different reason: her patronage of nurses comes through her martyrdom and her association with care of the breast and with those tending the wounded.
So the honest answer is that the Church has more than one, and which name a hospital or a nursing school uses often depends on its own founding order.
Who was St. Camillus de Lellis?
Camillus de Lellis was born in 1550 and spent his youth as a soldier and a compulsive gambler, at one point losing everything he owned including the shirt he was wearing. A leg wound that never healed properly took him to the San Giacomo hospital in Rome, first as a patient and then, when he could not pay, as a servant.
What he found there changed him. Hospitals of the period were places the poor went to die, staffed largely by hired help who did not much care. He was dismissed for arguing about the standard of care. He came back, was ordained, and founded an order whose members took a fourth vow: to serve the sick even at risk of their own lives, including in plague.
They wore a red cross on the habit, three centuries before the Red Cross took the symbol. He insisted his men treat patients as they would treat Christ, and he made them do the unglamorous work: washing, feeding, changing beds, sitting with the dying.
Prayer to St. Camillus de Lellis
St. Camillus, who came into the hospital as a patient and stayed as a servant: obtain for every nurse the strength for the long shift and the tenderness for the last hour. Where the work is thankless, keep them from bitterness. Where it is frightening, keep them steady. And let them see, in the person in front of them, who it is they are really tending. Amen.
The feast: July 14
July 14. He is patron of nurses, of the sick, and of hospitals, and his order still runs and staffs them. Many nursing schools keep the feast, and the blessing of hands is a custom associated with it. St. Agatha and St. Catherine of Siena are also invoked by nurses in different traditions.
How to ask their intercession
Nurses commonly ask at the start of a shift, and Camillus is a natural intercessor for the specific problem of caring well when you are exhausted, which was the condition he worked in for most of his life. Families of patients ask for the nursing staff by name more often than the staff realise.
The two formal patrons: St. Camillus and St. John of God
This is one of the few patronages the popes have fixed in writing. In 1886 Pope Leo XIII proclaimed St. Camillus de Lellis patron of all hospitals and of the sick, a patronage St. John of God also holds. In 1930 Pope Pius XI named Camillus co-patron, with St. John of God, of nurses and nursing associations.
St. John of God (1495–1550, feast March 8) was a Portuguese soldier, shepherd and bookseller who, after a conversion in Granada in 1537 so violent that he was locked in the ward for the insane of the Royal Hospital, chained and flogged as the treatment of the day required, came out determined to care for the sick differently. He opened a house for the sick poor of Granada and nursed them himself, begging for what they needed. He died on his fifty-fifth birthday of pneumonia, after going into a river to save a young man from drowning. His followers became the Brothers Hospitallers, who still run hospitals around the world.
St. Camillus (1550–1614, feast July 14) came to the sick the same way, from the wrong side of the bed. His order took a fourth vow, “to serve the sick, even with danger to one’s own life”, and nursed plague victims in Naples and Rome. The doctors they work beside have their own patron in St. Luke; see the patron saint of doctors. Camillus told his men to treat every patient as Christ, which is the Gospel’s own measure: “I was sick and you visited me” (Matthew 25:36).
Nursing as a work of mercy
The Church counts “visiting the sick” among the works of mercy (CCC 2447), and nurses do it for twelve hours at a time. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is, in one sentence, a description of nursing: he “bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him” (Luke 10:34). The work is often unseen and rarely thanked. Christ says it is done to him: “because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
A prayer for a nurse before a shift
For the car park before a night shift, the locker room, or the first quiet minute on the ward.
Lord Jesus, you touched the sick and made them well. Be with me on this shift. Give me a clear head, steady hands and a patient heart. Let me see you in every patient, and let them see something of you in me. Keep me and my colleagues safe, and bring me home tired, not broken. St. Camillus, St. John of God, pray for us. Amen.
A prayer after losing a patient
Nurses carry deaths that the rest of us never hear about. For the patient who died on your shift, and for you.
Lord, I give you (name), who died in my care today. Receive them into your mercy, and comfort the people who loved them. I did what I could. Take what I could not do, and let me rest tonight. St. Camillus, who sat with the dying, pray for me. Amen.
If the weight of the work has become too much, talk to someone: a colleague, occupational health, a chaplain, a priest. For more prayers for the sick you care for, see a prayer for the chronically ill, and for the saint patients ask for, the patron saint of healing.
For the patients whose healing is a daily journey rather than an event: a prayer for the chronically ill — to pray with them, or for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Solemnity
All Saints DaySee the full liturgical calendar — every feast this year, and an embed for your parish site.