Saint Giuseppe Moscati: Doctor of the Poor

PREFACE

Much has been written about Giuseppe Moscati, especially after his canonization, which took place in Saint Peter’s Square on October 25, 1987. His reputation as a physician dedicated particularly to the poor—or pro-bono doctor, as he was called—attracted everyone’s attention and gave rise to an indescribable wave of sympathy. The fact that he was a physician, to whose intercession countless graces of healing have been attributed, made him popular and spread devotion to him far and wide.

His tomb in the Church of the Gesú Nuovo is the constant destination of pilgrimages, and the faithful can be found there at all hours of the day, praying and kissing the hands of the bronze statue and of the sculpted figure on the tomb where his body rests. These hands have been polished to a shine by the caresses of the devotees.

Furthermore, if we are to believe a great number of testimonies, which are published now and then in the bimonthly magazine Il Gesù Nuovo, edited in Naples, the saint manifests his presence in dreams or in particular circumstances, announcing a healing or giving significant signs. The walls of the Moscati Room adjacent to the Church of the Gesù Nuovo are covered with ex voto offerings, tangible signs of thanksgiving for the graces received.

Nor can we fail to mention the spiritual graces obtained through the intercession of the saint—graces that are more hidden, but no less numerous or important.

In reading his biography, we are fascinated by his personality, as were those who knew him and dealt with him while he was alive. It was impossible not to admire him and to be charmed by him. His teaching, his professional credentials, his detachment from money and his interest in the poor earned him respect, sympathy and affection. Even those who were far from the faith were won over by his work and, especially after his death, gave explicit testimony to that effect.

We all feel sometimes the need to meet someone whose life can show us higher values and trustworthy goals. Giuseppe Moscati was such a person. He is the man who was able to reconcile science and faith and who, by his work, communicated to others the fruits of this synthesis. In doing so he was benevolent, understanding, charitable and not attached to worldly goods. His writings, which have an unmistakable style, are always filled with lofty sentiments of great spiritual value that tend to communicate serenity and peace.

In composing these pages I relied very much on the testimonies of those who lived alongside the saint and had a relationship with him, especially his students and colleagues. These testimonies were always given under oath as part of the canonical processes for his beatification and canonization.

I hope that acquaintance with the saintly doctor, our contemporary, may bear good fruit for the readers and prompt them to imitate him. In today’s world, which is rich in technological progress but often lacking in sensitivity for the poor and the suffering, his life can be a word to the wise and an encouragement to bring about a climate of solidarity and greater understanding.

CHRONOLOGY

7/25/1880     Giuseppe Moscati is born in Benevento, a son of Francesco and Rosa de Luca.

7/31/1880     He is baptized with the names Giuseppe Maria Carlo Alfonso.

1881-1884     His father is promoted to Judge of the Court of Appeals and moves with his family to Ancona; in 1884 he is appointed Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeals in Naples.

12/8/1888     Giuseppe receives his First Holy Communion from Monsignor Enrico Marano in the Church of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart.

1889-1897     He enrolls in the secondary school affiliated with the Vittorio Emanuele Institute. In 1897 he earns a classical diploma and enrolls in the Faculty of Medicine.

12/21/1897     His father dies.

3/2/1898     He receives the Sacrament of Confirmation, conferred on him by Bishop Pasquale de Siena, Auxiliary Bishop of Cardinal Sanfelice.

8/4/1903     Giuseppe earns a degree in medicine. In that same year he wins the competition for temporary assistant at the Ospedali Riuniti.

6/2/1904     His brother Alberto dies.

1908     Regular Assistant Professor at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry.

1911     Helps victims of cholera. Temporary Assistant at the Ospedali Riuniti. Associate member of the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery.

1911-1923     Teaching at the Ospedale degli Incurabili (Hospital for Incurables).

11/25/1914     His mother dies.

1919     Head Physician of the Third Men’s Ward of the Ospedale degli Incurabili.

10/14/1922     University Teaching Qualification for courses in general clinical medicine.

4/12/1927     Dies in his house on the via Cisterna dell’Olio.

11/16/1930     Translation of his body to the Church of the Gesù Nuovo in Naples.

7/6/1931     Beginning of the diocesan process of documenting his reputation for sanctity.

5/10/1973     Decree issued on his heroic virtues by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

11/16/1975     Beatification in Saint Peter’s Square.

11/16/1977     Translation of his body to the altar of the Visitation, in the Church of the Gesù Nuovo.

4/28/1987     Approval of the miraculous healing of Giuseppe Montefusco of acute non-lymphoid leukemia.

10/25/1987     Canonization in Saint Peter’s Square.

1

From the Sabato to Vesuvius

Santa Lucia di Serino is a town of very ancient origin in the Italian province of Avellino. In its territory are found tombs from the third and fourth century B.C. and also remains of the Claudius Aqueduct, which supplied the Roman military port of Miseno. It is situated on the right bank of the Sabato River, which flows also through Benevento.

In Santa Lucia di Serino the Moscati family boasts of well-documented origins going back to the sixteenth century.

There, on October 12, 1836, was born Francesco Moscati, Giuseppe’s father, who took a degree in law at the University of Naples and had a brilliant career on the judicial bench. He served as a judge in the Court of Cassino, presiding judge of the Court of Benevento, judge of the Court of Appeals in Ancona and, lastly, presiding judge of the Court of Appeals in Naples. In Cassino he married Rosa de Luca, who was descended from the Marquis of Roseto. Their marriage was blessed by the Abbot of Monte Cassino, Father Luigi Tosti, a famous historian who is remembered in the events of the Italian Risorgimento: in 1849 he had exhorted Pius IX to renounce his temporal power as ruler of the Papal States.

The Moscatis had nine children: Giuseppe was the seventh.

The first five children were born in Monte Cassino: Gennaro, Alberto, the twins Maria and Anna, who died of diphtheria in 1875, and another Maria; in Benevento—Anna, who died four years after Giuseppe did; in Ancona—Eugenio and Domenico.

The Moscatis had moved to Benevento in 1877, when Francesco was promoted to presiding judge of the court, and they took up lodgings on the via San Diodato, in the vicinity of the hospital. After a few months they changed their residence and settled in an apartment on the via Port’Aurea, near the Arch of Trajan, in the Andreotti Palace, which was later acquired by the Leo family, the present owners. There, on July 25 in the year 1880, Giuseppe came into the world.

In those days, Benevento had been annexed to the Kingdom of Italy for two decades, but obviously this change of course had not nullified the previous centuries of papal rule. As in other cities, here too the religious were expelled, the lands and goods of the convents were seized, archives were confiscated and the buildings that had belonged to the clergy were occupied, with resulting damage that can be imagined. Freemasonry had a free hand, and the wind of anticlericalism was blowing unabated.

To Benevento the Moscatis brought their faith and a constant fidelity to Christian principles, and they took the trouble to give their children a religious education. The parents were fervent Christians, as we know from their son Eugenio who, in the diocesan process in Naples concerning the virtues of the then Servant of God Giuseppe Moscati, testified as follows:

Our parents . . . were very fervent practicing Christians, and proof of this is their scrupulosity in educating us in the bosom of the Catholic religion by their regular attendance to their Christian duties and by the daily recitation in common of the Holy Rosary of our Lady. . . . We were all educated at home. According to the custom of our household, the Servant of God was baptized immediately and to him was given the name of Giuseppe, followed by Maria, as our parents did with all their male children, and then other names that I do not remember. He received the Sacrament of Confirmation at the age of twelve or thirteen, if I recall correctly. His sponsor was Signor Cosenza of Naples. What I have testified I learned firsthand. (PSV, §4)

Presiding Judge Francesco, as a boy, had thought about religious life but had been dissuaded from it by the Redemptorist Father Ribera, who had presented to him the Christian ideal that he could put into practice while exercising the profession of judge.

As for his mamma, Signora Rosa, who went to heaven on November 25, 1914, when her son Giuseppe had already earned distinction as a professor, let us recall what she said to her children on her deathbed, after receiving the sacraments: My dear children, you cause me to die happy: always flee from sin, which is the greatest evil in life.

In the Moscati family, religiosity was a tradition and an inheritance. Among the family members of earlier generations there was even a Jesuit Father, Domenico Antonio Moscati, who in the seventeenth century was a man of letters and a philosopher, who by his writings spread devotion to Mary Immaculate.

The education imparted to the children was in keeping with the social rank of the family, with the position held by the presiding judge of the Court of Appeals in Naples and also with their economic status, since the Moscati and De Luca families were comfortably well off. The boys had their own tutor, who supervised their studies and cultural formation.

Every year Judge Moscati spent his vacation with his family in their native region, in Santa Lucia di Serino, and he dedicated many hours of the day to the children, having them take long walks through the fields and the nearby mountains, where there were plenty of trees, lakes and animals. Every day he attended Mass in the chapel of his ancestral palace or in the seventeenth-century church of Santa Maria della Sanità at the monastery of the Poor Clares, setting an example for his children, because he always received Communion and, when he could, served at the altar.

His Honor the Presiding Judge, wrote Sister Maria Chiarina Rossi to Nina Moscati on January 28, 1928, sometimes served Mass and very much enjoyed carrying the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament when It was exposed during the month of October. He and the boys all used to remain kneeling for a long time like statues.¹

Religiosity and education went hand in hand for the high-ranking magistrate.

One year after Peppino’s [Giuseppi’s] birth, the Moscati family moved to Ancona, in the Marches, which in the past had been part of the Papal States, although Freemasonry prevailed there now. Public officials, in order to keep their post and advance in their career, were often compelled to join the sect and to stop performing their religious duties. Presiding Judge Francesco, however, held firm and never submitted to the moral extortion coming from various parties. He remained true to his principles and as always, together with his family, attended Mass and received Communion. Usually he went to the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, in the vicinity of the piazza della Posta, the site of the Palazzo Rosini, his place of residence.

For him faith in God was greater than external pressures and the fear that merely human considerations could strike in him.

In those days Peppino was too little to understand the difficulties and the courageous resistance of his father, but he inherited that courage, and later on, whenever he noticed injustices and abuses of power, he energetically rebelled and, like his father, never compromised his own conscience. The constant uprightness of the parents’ conduct could not help shaping beneficially the future life of their children!

Three years later, Francesco Moscati was promoted to the Court of Appeals in Naples, with assignments to the sessions of the Court of