Angelo Paoli

Angelo Paoli was born Francesco Paoli on 1 September 1642 in Argigliano, a small village in the Lunigiana district of Tuscany, then within the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Little is recorded of his childhood beyond a rural upbringing and an early religious vocation. In 1660, at about eighteen years of age, he entered the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance) and took the name Angelo. After studies in Carmelite houses of formation in Tuscany he was ordained a priest in 1667.

Over the following two decades he served in several Carmelite convents in Tuscany, including as novice master and in other local offices. Those who knew him remarked on his austere manner of life, his fidelity to Carmelite prayer, and a growing practical concern for people in material want. These years of ordinary conventual work prepared the ministry for which he later became known.

In 1687 his superiors assigned him to the convent of San Martino ai Monti on the Esquiline in Rome, where he remained until his death more than thirty years later. In the papal city he sought out the destitute in the streets, in poor dwellings, and among patients discharged from hospitals with nowhere to go. He collected alms, distributed food and clothing, and arranged shelter, especially for convalescents. He visited prisons and showed care for galley slaves and other outcasts. Romans called him the father of the poor. His works of mercy were joined to a marked devotion to the Cross and the Passion of Christ, which he contemplated at length and which he presented as the reason for serving the suffering.

Paoli died in Rome on 20 January 1720 and was buried in the basilica of San Martino ai Monti. A reputation for holiness and for favors attributed to his intercession continued after his death, and a cause for beatification was in time introduced. He was beatified on 25 April 2010 at the Basilica of St. John Lateran by authority of Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic Church commemorates him on 20 January. He is remembered as a Carmelite priest of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Rome whose life joined contemplative prayer to organized care for the poorest.