Confessor Pacificus

Pacificus of San Severino, commemorated as a confessor of the Order of Friars Minor, was born Carlo Antonio Divini on 1 March 1653 in San Severino in the Marche of central Italy, then part of the Papal States. His parents died while he was still a small child, leaving him an orphan at a very young age. He was thereafter raised by an uncle who was a priest and who directed his education. Drawn early to a life of piety and austerity, he entered the Reformed observance of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor in 1670 and received the religious name Pacificus. After novitiate, profession, and the usual studies in philosophy and theology, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1678.

In the years after ordination he taught philosophy in Franciscan houses of study and then took up the work of a missionary preacher, traveling through the Marche and neighboring districts to give popular missions. He was known in this period for personal poverty, long prayer, and preaching that urged repentance and amendment of life. That active apostolate lasted only a short time. From about 1683 his health collapsed. He became deaf, his sight failed until he was nearly blind, and ulcerated sores and lameness in his legs made walking extremely difficult. These afflictions forced him to abandon both teaching and public missions.

The remaining decades of his life were spent in the Franciscan convent at San Severino. There he lived a hidden life of contemplative prayer, patient endurance of chronic pain, and such priestly ministry as his disabilities still allowed, especially confession and spiritual counsel. He continued fasting, night vigils, and other penances despite his frailty. Contemporaries reported mystical graces, including ecstasies, and attributed healings and prophetic insights to his prayers.

He died in the convent at San Severino on 24 September 1721. Local and Franciscan veneration followed. He was beatified by Pope Pius VI in 1786 and canonized by Pope Gregory XVI on 26 May 1839. The Roman Martyrology keeps his feast on 24 September. He is venerated as a patron of San Severino Marche and remembered as a Franciscan who joined a brief period of evangelical preaching to a long later life of illness borne in faith.