Saint Giuseppe Moscati

Giuseppe Moscati (25 July 1880 – 12 April 1927) was an Italian doctor, scientific researcher, and university professor noted both for his pioneering work in biochemistry and for his piety. Moscati was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1987; his feast day is 16 November. Moscati was the seventh of nine children born to a noble Beneventene family which came from the village of Santa Lucia in Serino, near Avellino. His father, Francesco, was well known as a lawyer and magistrate in the area; his mother, Rosa De Luca dei Marchesi di Roseto, was of noble birth. The family moved from Cassino to Benevento in 1877 following his father's appointment as president of the Benevento court, and for a time was lodged Via San Diodato, near the Sacred Heart of Jesus hospital, later moving to Via Porta Aurea. Giuseppe Maria Carlo Alfonso Moscati was born at one o'clock in the morning on 25 July 1880, in the Rotondi Andreotti Leo Palace. The child was baptised in the same place, six days after his birth (31 July), by the priest Innocenzo Maio. In commemoration of Moscati's ties to the area, a marble statue would later be erected in the Blessed Sacrament chapel of Benevento Cathedral. At eight years of age, on 8 December 1888, 'Peppino' (as he was called and as he liked to sign himself in his personal correspondence) received his First Holy Communion from Monsignor Enrico Marano in the Sanctuary of the Ancelle del Sacro Cuore (Handmaids of the Sacred Heart), where Moscati later often met Blessed Bartolo Longo, destined to become the founder of the Marian Shrine of Pompei. Next to the church lived Caterina Volpicelli, later declared a saint, with whom the family developed a spiritual bond. Caterina was eventually to become one of the most important spiritual guides in Moscati's later life.