Blessed Gennaro Maria Sarnelli, Redemptorist Apostle of the Poor of Naples

Who was Blessed Gennaro Maria Sarnelli?

Blessed Gennaro Maria Sarnelli was a Neapolitan nobleman and lawyer who became a priest, one of the first companions of St. Alphonsus Liguori in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, and a fearless defender of poor girls sold into prostitution in eighteenth-century Naples. He died at forty-one, worn out by work, on June 30, 1744. Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 12, 1996, praising the "tireless pastoral zeal" that flowed from his close personal communion with Christ (our translation of the Italian homily).

He was born in Naples on September 12, 1702, the fourth son of Angelo Sarnelli, Baron of Ciorani, and Caterina Scoppa. At fourteen, moved by the beatification of the Jesuit missionary St. John Francis Regis, he asked to become a Jesuit. His father thought him too young and set him to study law instead.

The lawyer at the hospital of incurables

Gennaro did well. He took a doctorate in civil and canon law in 1722 and made a name at the bar. He also joined a confraternity of lawyers and doctors directed by the Pious Workers at the church of St. Nicholas of Toledo, whose rule obliged members to visit the sick in the great Neapolitan Hospital of the Incurables. At the bedsides there he heard the Lord calling him to the priesthood.

In September 1728 he left the courts and became a seminarian. He lived for a time at the College of the Holy Family, the "Chinese College" founded by Matteo Ripa to train Chinese priests, then joined the Congregation of the Apostolic Missions, a society of Neapolitan diocesan priests who preached missions. He was ordained in 1732. As a cleric and young priest he taught catechism to children forced to work, and visited the old in the hospice of San Gennaro and sick convicts from the galleys.

With St. Alphonsus

In those years he became a close friend of Alphonsus Liguori, and the two organized the "Evening Chapels," gatherings where working people learned the faith. When Alphonsus founded the Redemptorists at Scala in November 1732 and was attacked on every side, Gennaro defended him. In 1733 he went to help with a mission at Ravello and decided to join him, while keeping his ties to the Apostolic Missions; the Redemptorists date his formal entry to April 1736. He gave himself to the missions along the Amalfi coast until his health broke and Alphonsus sent him back to Naples to recover.

A crusade for the girls of Naples

As soon as he could work again, Gennaro took up the cause that marks his life. Assigned to teach the faith in the parish of Sts. Francis and Matthew in the Spanish Quarter, he saw how many young girls were being drawn or sold into prostitution. He preached, wrote and petitioned the authorities, laying the blame on officials who tolerated the trade. His book Ragioni cattoliche, legali e politiche argued the case on religious, legal and civic grounds. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls his campaign one "which has rarely been surpassed in boldness" and says that "God evidently protected him in the dangers to which his zeal exposed him." The Redemptorists count him among the early writers on the social cause of women.

Writer on prayer

He wrote about thirty works on meditation, the spiritual life, spiritual direction, law, education and morals, among them Il mondo santificato, which taught lay people to meditate together, and a book against blasphemy. His great conviction was that mental prayer is simple, within everyone's reach and morally necessary to persevere in grace. Two years after his death, on December 16, 1746, Pope Benedict XIV granted indulgences for meditation, a grant the Catholic Encyclopedia traces to Gennaro's work.

Death and beatification

In 1741 he joined Alphonsus in the great missions in the villages around Naples. He preached until the end of April 1744, then came back to Naples gravely ill and died there on June 30. Alphonsus wrote his life, and in it he recorded that "as soon as he had breathed his last breath his countenance suddenly became beautiful — and his body exhaled a sweet odour — which remained in the room long after the interment." This is a reported sign, from an eyewitness who was himself a saint.

He was first buried in Naples. His body now rests at Ciorani, near Mercato San Severino, where his father was baron and where the Redemptorists made one of their first houses. Pope Pius X declared his virtues heroic in 1906, and after a healing attributed to his intercession was approved in January 1996, Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 12, 1996.

Symbols of Blessed Gennaro Maria Sarnelli in art

Portraits show a thin, earnest priest in the black Redemptorist habit with a rosary at the belt, often holding a crucifix or a pen and book for his many writings. Because he died young and is far less often painted than Alphonsus, his images are mostly portraits made for his cause. When you see him beside an older bishop with a crucifix, the bishop is St. Alphonsus.

Feast day and prayer

We keep his feast on June 30, the day of his death. The Redemptorists honor him as one of their founding generation, with St. Gerard Majella and Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos.

We have no traditional prayer to Blessed Gennaro that we can cite here. Let us ask him to pray for women and children caught in human trafficking, for lawyers and all who defend the weak, and for the grace to keep a little time each day for meditation, as he taught.

Blessed Gennaro Maria Sarnelli, pray for us.