AS A YOUNG MAN HE BECAME A TERTIARY
THE CULT DISCLOSED BY THE FRANCISCANS
Pope Paul III includes it in the catalogue of Tertiaries
THE CULT DISCLOSED BY THE FRANCISCANS
Pope Paul III includes it in the catalogue of Tertiaries
text by Umberto Battini
historian and popularize
historian and popularize
Reading the Life of Saint Rocco we discover that after the loss of his two parents, a very significant and touching fact, the young and noble Rocco made the decision to become a tertiary, as indicated in the papal bull Supra Montem of 1289 and however remained in the lay state without affiliating himself with any small Franciscan tertiary community such as the one to which Saint Rocco joined, for example, Corrado Confalonieri near Calendasco in Piacenza.
He then dedicated himself to volunteering for charity in hospitals for the poor sick and pilgrims and at a certain moment he left as a pilgrim.
The aspect one wants to mean here is that of having been S. Rocco was a true Franciscan penitent: in fact, from an early age he lived very closely the Franciscan ideal and as an S. Corrado was attracted to it and after the decisive events of his life, it was to this tertiary ideal to which he dedicated his life, in a solitary way as was among the possibilities of the Rule of Time for the laity, namely the Supra Montem.
With a formal act, Pope Paul III in 1547, with the papal bull "Cum a nobis", officially included San Rocco in the catalogue of Saints of the Third Order of San Francesco de penitentia nuncupati and which from 1447 had been an Order just like those already known, that is, with its own convents, hospitals, oratories and its own Minister General, etc.
Pope Urban VIII officially approved the cult in 1629 and Pope Innocent XII in 1694 prescribed the Franciscans to celebrate it solemnly.
Obviously S. Rocco, already in the early decades of the 15th century, was highly venerated and known as a protector from the plague, and his cult spread among the people rapidly and above all thanks to the Capuchin Franciscans from 1500 onwards. Thus, the Church of Rome began to investigate him and carry out the acts described above.
So on the fact that S. Rocco is a Franciscan tertiary penitent, there is no doubt about it: a cult always carried on by the Franciscans and therefore officially included in the Catalogue of the Third Order and without the other Franciscan orders making protests, such as the Friars Minor or the Conventuals or the Capuchins.
In these decades the cult of Saint Roch, due to the lack of knowledge of his Life, has placed him among the anonymous lay saints but this is not the case, that is, it is not the case of Saint Roch of Montpellier, He belongs to Franciscanism and from his youth by his personal choice and then extended to his entire holylife and then passed on to the Sacred and Human History of the Saint of the Plague Rocco.
text by Umberto Battini
historian and popularize
historian and popularize











