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Biography

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Bernardino Realino was born on 1 December 1530 in Carpi, in the Duchy of Modena in northern Italy, into a family of the provincial nobility. His father, Francesco Realino, had connections with the Este court. Bernardino received a humanist and legal education, studying at Modena and then at the University of Bologna, where he took doctorates in civil and canon law. In the mid-sixteenth century he followed a secular career typical of a well-trained jurist of his class. He practiced as an advocate, was appointed podestà of Felizzano in Piedmont, held judicial and fiscal posts, and later became superintendent of the lands of the Marquis of Pescara in the Kingdom of Naples. Accounts of these years present him as able and worldly, moving in administrative and court circles, before a religious conversion redirected his life.

In Naples in the early 1560s Realino came under the influence of Jesuit preaching and underwent a period of examination of conscience. In 1564, at about the age of thirty-four, he entered the Society of Jesus in that city. He completed his novitiate there and was ordained a priest in 1567. For some years he worked in the Naples region as a preacher, confessor, and instructor. In 1574 his superiors assigned him to Lecce in Apulia, where the Jesuits were establishing a college. He remained in Lecce for more than forty years, until his death, becoming so identified with the city and its people that later devotion named him the Apostle of Lecce. He served the college as rector, as prefect of studies, and in other offices, but he repeatedly declined promotions that would have taken him away from the town, including, according to Jesuit tradition, appointment to the bishopric of Lecce.

Realino’s reputation in Lecce rested on pastoral rather than administrative work. He preached in the city’s churches, devoted long hours to hearing confessions, visited the sick in private houses and hospitals, and attended those in prison. He was remembered for patience with penitents, for personal austerity combined with generosity in almsgiving, and for a growing fame for miracles, healings, and foreknowledge that attached to him even in his lifetime. He lived under the ordinary vows and discipline of the Society of Jesus and pronounced his final vows in due course. In old age he continued, as far as health allowed, the same round of ministry. He died in Lecce on 2 July 1616.

Veneration began at once. His body was placed in the Jesuit church in Lecce, which became a focus of local pilgrimage. The formal cause advanced slowly through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was completed only in the nineteenth. Pope Leo XIII beatified him on 12 January 1896. Pope Pius XII canonized him on 22 June 1947. His feast is observed on 2 July. He is honored as the principal patron saint of the city of Lecce.

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