Confessor Francis di Girolamo

Francesco de Geronimo, also known as Francis di Girolamo or Francis Jerome, was born on 17 December 1642 in Grottaglie, a town in Apulia in the Kingdom of Naples. He was the eldest of eleven children of Giovanni Leonardo di Geronimo and Gentile Gravina. Raised in a devout household, he received his early education from the Jesuits at their college in Taranto. At about sixteen he went to Naples, where he first studied law and then theology. He was ordained a priest on 18 March 1666 and for a time served as prefect of students at the Collegio dei Nobili in Naples. Seeking a stricter religious life and missionary work, he entered the Society of Jesus on 1 July 1670.

After Jesuit formation, including novitiate and tertianship, he hoped to be sent to the foreign missions, especially the East Indies or Japan, following the example of St. Francis Xavier, to whom he had a marked devotion. His superiors instead kept him in the Kingdom of Naples, judging that his gifts as a preacher were needed there. From the mid-1670s until his death he worked as a popular missionary, chiefly in Naples and the surrounding countryside. He became known for preaching in streets, markets, and public squares as well as in churches, and for ministry among the poor, galley slaves, prisoners, and prostitutes. Period accounts describe an energetic preacher who used simple language and dramatic delivery to reach ordinary people. He also conducted numerous parish missions in rural southern Italy and declined offers of episcopal office.

His spiritual life was marked by austerity, long prayer, and Marian devotion. Hagiographical tradition, later examined in the beatification and canonization processes, attributed to him gifts of prophecy and of reading hearts, as well as miracles during his life and after death. In later years his health failed, but he continued apostolic work until shortly before he died in Naples on 11 May 1716.

Devotion to him spread quickly in Naples and Apulia. He was beatified by Pope Pius VII on 2 May 1806 and canonized by Pope Gregory XVI on 26 May 1839. His feast is kept on 11 May. He is venerated especially in Grottaglie, and his remains are preserved in the Church of the Gesù Nuovo in Naples, the former Jesuit professed house with which he was long associated. He is remembered as a leading urban missionary preacher of the Jesuit tradition in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century southern Italy.