Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Ludovico of Casoria.

Arcangelo Palmentieri, a trade cabinetmaker born in Casoria, near Naples, joined the Friars Minor in 1832 using the alias Ludovico. He spent several years instructing younger members of his province in chemistry, physics, and mathematics after receiving his ordination five years later.

He experienced a supernatural event in 1847 that he later described as a cleansing. A dispensary for the poor, two schools for African children, an institute for nobility’s children, an institution for orphans, the deaf, and the speechless, as well as other institutes for the blind, elderly, and travelers were among the institutions he founded as a result of dedicating his life to the poor and the ill. He built philanthropic institutes in Naples, Florence, and Assisi, as well as a hospital for his province’s friars. Christ’s love, he once declared, “has wounded my heart,” and it moved him to enormous deeds of kindness.

He founded the Gray Brothers in 1859; a religious order made up of men who had previously belonged to the Secular Franciscan Order to aid in continuing these deeds of charity. For the same reason, he established the Gray Sisters of St. Elizabeth three years later.

To support the continuation of these deeds of compassion, he founded the Gray Brothers in 1859. The Gray Brothers were a religious order of men previously belonging to the Secular Franciscan Order. He established the Gray Sisters of St. Elizabeth for the same reason three years later.

Source: franciscanmedia.org