Saint Cajetan

Priest

Feast Day

August 7

Life

1480–1547

Canonized

1671

Order

Order of Clerics Regular (Theatines, C.R.)

Born

Vicenza, Republic of Venice

Saint Cajetan (Gaetano dei Conti di Thiene) was born of noble parents at Vicenza in the Republic of Venice in October 1480. He took doctorates in civil and canon law from the University of Padua in 1504, served as a protonotary apostolic at the Roman Curia under Pope Julius II, and was ordained priest at Rome on September 30, 1516.

At Rome he joined the Oratory of Divine Love, an early Catholic Reform sodality of priests and laymen at the church of Saints Sylvester and Dorothy in Trastevere, where the principles of the future Counter-Reformation were taking shape under the influence of Saint John of God's predecessors, Cardinal Carafa, and others. Returning to Vicenza, then Verona and Venice, he carried on works of charity for the sick and the poor, founding hospitals at Venice, Vicenza, and elsewhere.

On June 24, 1524, with Bishop Giovanni Pietro Carafa of Theate (the future Pope Paul IV) and two companions, Bonifacio da Colle and Paolo Consiglieri, Cajetan founded the Order of Clerics Regular, called the Theatines from Carafa's see of Theate (modern Chieti). The Theatines were the first congregation of priests under solemn vows including a vow of absolute providential poverty (no possessions, no fixed income, no organized begging) dedicated to the reform of the diocesan clergy through example, the renewal of preaching and the sacraments, and works of charity. They are reckoned by many historians as the first of the new Catholic Reform orders that preceded and shaped the Council of Trent. Cajetan was elected superior general after Carafa.

The sack of Rome by imperial troops in 1527 forced the Theatines to flee to Venice; from 1533 Cajetan led the foundation at Naples, where he spent his last fourteen years. He died at Naples on August 7, 1547. Pope Urban VIII beatified him in 1629, and Pope Clement X canonized him on April 12, 1671. The Memorial in the General Roman Calendar is observed on August 7.