ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 15th of December
VENERABLE INNOCENT OF CHIUSA, RELIGIOUS
Venerable Innocent of Chiusa (Innocentius a Clusa), remembered on December 15, was a lay brother of the Order of Saint Francis. A Sicilian by birth - Chiusa, after which he is named, is a city in Sicily - he showed signs of his future sainthood from a very young age. He loved solitude and would retreat to a secluded corner to pray while other boys were playing.
As a youth he entered the order of the reformed Franciscans and practiced all the virtues to a heroic degree. He fought against the evil enemy with fasting, cilice (hair shirt), scourging and other strict penitential exercises and mortification. Innocent was blessed with visions of the Blessed Virgin and confidential conversations with the holy angels.
He advised the pious Innocentia de Ricci to join the Franciscans. After his blessed death, which, as was revealed to him while he was still alive, did not take place in Sicily but in Rome (in 1631), the whole city rushed to venerate him and to see and kiss his corpse. He was buried with full honours in the choir of the monastery church, but in 1742, at the request of the Empress Eleonora and with the approval of Pope Urban VIII, he was transferred to the Franciscan Convent in Trastevere.
In his beatification process, which was carried out on the orders of Pope Innocent XII. and begun on October 2, 1692, 290 credible witnesses confirmed the sanctity of his life. But we do not know whether the beatification actually took place. Incidentally, in the calendar of the Third Order of the Franciscans he just has the designation “venerable”. He is also listed in the Elenchus*.
(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, Volume 3, Augsburg, 1869, p. 47)
*A hagiography source used by the authors
Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints - Sources and Abbreviations
Sources of these articles (in the original German): books.google.co.uk, de-academic.com, zeno.org, openlibrary.org
Comments
Post a Comment