Andrew Avellino

Saint Andrew Avellino was born in 1521 at Castronuovo in Lucania, within the Kingdom of Naples, and received the baptismal name Lancellotto. He came from a family of respectable standing and was given a solid education in the humanities and philosophy. He then studied civil and canon law at Naples, obtained the doctorate, and was ordained a priest. For some years he practiced as an advocate in the ecclesiastical tribunals of the city. An incident that arose while he was pleading a case produced a crisis of conscience and led him to abandon the legal profession in order to pursue a more strictly religious life.

In 1556 he entered the Congregation of Clerics Regular, known as the Theatines, at the house of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples, taking the name Andrew after the Apostle. Following his religious profession he served the order as master of novices and in other offices. He was later dispatched to northern Italy, where he worked in close collaboration with Saint Charles Borromeo in the reform of the Archdiocese of Milan and helped to establish Theatine communities in several northern Italian cities. His preaching, his skill as a confessor, and his insistence on clerical discipline earned him a wide reputation.

The greater part of his later life was spent in Naples. There he became one of the most sought-after spiritual directors of the late sixteenth century, noted for personal austerity, for the conversion of public sinners, and for the reform of the secular clergy. He was repeatedly elected superior of the Neapolitan Theatine house and was regarded by his contemporaries as an embodiment of the Theatine ideal of apostolic life. Numerous conversions of persons of every social rank were attributed to his ministry.

On 10 November 1608, while beginning to celebrate Mass in the church of San Paolo Maggiore, he suffered a sudden stroke of apoplexy and died later the same day, in his eighty-seventh year. Popular devotion to him spread quickly throughout the Kingdom of Naples. He was beatified by Pope Urban VIII in 1625 and canonized by Pope Clement XI in 1712. Because of the manner of his death he is invoked against apoplexy and sudden death; he is also venerated as a patron of Naples and of Sicily. His relics are preserved in the church of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples.