ITALIA TOUR

ST. CAJETAN JOINT PATRON SAINT OF PIAZZA ARMERINA ENNA

3° Santo Patron of Piazza Armerina Enna Sicilia, s. Gaetano di Thiene

Qualche year before the beatification (1629), in our city already has the devotion to the Patriarch of the Theatines, cajetan, also because it talk about extraordinary events and authentic miracles occurring through his intercession.

This devotion culminates in August 1641 with the proclamation by the City Senate and his Council of Eighty, in 3° joint Patron Saint of the city. Through the writings in Spanish of our countryman, father Emanuele Calascibetta, we learn that miracles occur with such frequency that the Magistrate decides to pay a yearly allowance of 25 Urban shields for the lamp dedicated to blessed Gaetano and one of 250 shields for the Church of the Theatines. Thirty years later, in 1671, blessed cajetan was canonized by Pope Clement X and our city, the first to proclaim his protector, symbolises the event with eight days of devotions and parties (from 3 to 10 August).

In addition to the continuous masses in the Church accommodated in a month of work, during the celebrations are fired many "mortaletti" between the bells and the trumpets of the musicians, the presence of jurors, the nobility and great multitudes of people.

Treating the 2° Patron Teatino, Sant'Andrea Avellino, I alluded to the two statues are carved in 1642 in local stone, representing the two Saints, placed on the sides of the door of the city of Saint John the Baptist, and that today are found in front of the Church of St. Lorenzo or dei Teatini. S. Gaetano was born in Thiene, prov. in Vicenza in 1480 and died in Naples in 1547, doctor of law in Padua, becomes a priest in 1516.

In 1524, to restore apostolic life form among the clergy, the religious congregation of Theatines or Chietino, together with the priest Bonifacio de ' Colli, Paul Counselors and Bishop of Chieti (Latin Theates so Theatines), Gian Pietro Carafa, future Pope Paul IV. When he settled in Venice founded the company and the Hospital of the Incurables alla Giudecca. In 1533 in Naples establishes a pawnshop and in 1538 the viceroy grant him basilica di San Paolo Maggiore. Is usually depicted with the infant Jesus in her arms or in the Act of receiving it from the hands of our Lady, for an episode narrated by the Saint in a letter addressed to an Augustinian religious, where recounts that during the Christmas season of 1517, at the altar of the crib in the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, is lost in Ecstasy witnessing the miraculous birth of the Virgin.

The next time you go to Palermo, entered the Church to the Quattro Canti di San Giuseppe dei Teatini, here you can admire a painting of St. Gaetano.
In 1936 my maternal grandfather, Gaetano Marino, together with the municipal guard Gaetano Tudisco, takes an interest in getting the new statue of San Gaetano then kept in the Church of the Theatines.