“The poor and the sick will make us touch the sky of God with a finger”: a maxim that summarizes the vocation of S. Camillo de Lellispatron of the sick and military health and compatrion of Messina who left a tangible sign of charity and proximity in the city in the city he founded. From soldier of Ventura to Mendicante: his is a story of holiness acquired over time and culminated in the choice of dedicating his life to the sick by establishing the community of the infirm ministers. The Messina community he founded celebrated him accompanying the simulacrum – supported on the shoulder by the group of bearers – on the streets neighboring the parish church of Viale Principe Umberto.
The procession, animated by the “Giuseppe Verdi” band of Bordonarowas preceded by the solemn mass presided over by Father Severino of the Bordonaro community and concelebrated by the parish priest Father Hubert Goudjinou, in the presence of the Archconfraternity “Madonna della Salute of S. Camillo” led by Alessandro Zirilli, of the president of the fourth municipality Matteo Grasso and the councilor Alessandra Calafiore read the decree with which in 1755 the Senate of Messina Camillo compatrone from Messina. The link between the saint of the sick and the city of the Strait was particularly strengthened with the erection in the parish in 1965 of the current church, inaugurated in 1932 next to the homonymous nursing home. Here different relics are kept including the heart of the saint (within a precious silver reliquary of the Filippo Juvara school) with the pillow on which he was exhibited as soon as he was explained with some blood spots, the bandages with which he was wrapped in a foot wound, parts of the trousers and the spur.