"Bury Me At The Feet Of Aloysius Gonzaga."

St. Aloysius Gonzaga, S.J.

The Jesuits lost a devoted friend in the person of St. Charles Borromeo, who died in 1584. It is a calumny to say that he had turned against them and had taken the seminary of Milan from their direction. It was they themselves who had asked to be relieved of the responsibility, for he had so multiplied their colleges in his diocese, that it was impossible to give the seminary the attention it required. It is true that he was greviously offended by one individual Jesuit who injected himself into a controversy that was going on between the governor and the archbishop, and assailed the great prelate in the pulpit of the very church which had been given to the Society by Borromeo; but Claudio Aquaviva quickly brought him to the cardinal's feet to ask forgiveness, and then suspended him for two years from preaching. That incident, however, in no way diminished the affection of the saint for the Society. His last Mass was said in the Jesuit novitiate which he had founded, and he died in the arms of his Jesuit confessor, Father Adorno, two days afterwards. Seven years later, on June 21, 1591, another saint died, the young Aloysius Gonzaga. Borromeo knew him well, and had given him his first Communion. This boy saint was not only an angel of purity, but also a martyr of charity, for he died of a fever he had caught from the victims of a plague whom he was attending during a pestilence that devastated Italy. The venerable Robert Bellarmine was his confessor and spiritual father, and, later, when he was about to expire, he said to those around him: "Bury me at the feet of Aloysius Gonzaga."

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