On Sunday, October 14, 2018, Pope Francis canonized Blessed Paul VI, Blessed Oscar Romero, Blessed Vincent Romano, Blessed Francesco Spinelli, Blessed Nazaria March Mesa, and Blessed Katharina Kasper. A few weeks ago I wrote about Saint Paul VI. I want to continue writing about these newly canonized saints. Today I am writing about Vincenzo Romano. I am going to base my remarks about him on the short biography published recently in the English edition of L’Osservatore Romano.
Vincenzo Romano was truly a “priest clothed with righteousness,” as Psalm 132 says, a cause of joy for his faithful. It was Paul VI who beatified him on November 17, 1963, between the first and second sessions of the Second Vatican Council. On Sunday [October 14], both were proposed to the Church as Saints during the same Rite.
Fr. Vincenzo, the pastor of Santa Croce in Torre del Greco, Italy, was a country priest, an expression of the territory’s best moral and cultural qualities, able in his turn to teach in a Christian way, to evangelize and sanctify the environment in which he lived. He spent his entire life in the town between Vesuvius and the sea, in his paternal home on Via Piscopia, where he was born on June 3, 1751 and which today is a shrine beloved by the locals. He shared the joys and sorrows, hopes and worries of his compatriots. He followed a pastoral itinerary seemingly circumscribed by the small intersection of streets and alleys of his village, but in fact was open to the universal and perennial prerogatives of priestly ministry.
Born into a family of common folk, he lived for the people, seeking the spiritual and material good of the community. Immediately after his priestly ordination in the Cathedral of Naples on June 10, 1775, he began intensive pastoral work, focusing on the ministry of the Word and the Gospel of charity, priorities which inspired his mission.
The young priest opened a school in his own home, offering a free education to local children. He thus instilled in new generations the culture that he had learned from his studies in Naples, but more importantly he set the example of a life given entirely to God.
He dedicated special care to coral fishers, whose work comprised Torre del Greco’s largest industry. Coral boats set out to face the dangers of the sea with a solemn blessing and comforting words of the parish priest. In the fishermen’s nine-month absence Fr. Vincenzo took care of their families and saw to their needs.
In one of his many visits to the bedsides of the sick and dying, he contracted typhus, which nearly killed him. In his proverbial generosity, he gave all he had, such that his relatives had to keep watch to make sure that he was not left without bed sheets. Thus his parishioners’ affection and esteem for him grew, and today they still say that “every Torrese has the sea in his home and Fr. Vincenzo in his heart.” St. Vincenzo Romano died on December 20, 1831.