150 YEARS OF THE NAZARETH SISTERS

In the footsteps of Blessed Frances Siedliska in Rome (51)

Sr. M. Beata Rudzińska, CSFN

The Quirinal (1880) – at St. Stanislaus Kostka’s

The last of the sisters’ “neighbors” mentioned by Sister Gabriela was the Church of St. Andrew on the Quirinal Hill. Called the pearl of the Baroque, it was designed at the request of Pope Alexander VII by the master Gianlorenzo Bernini, whom we already know, and completed in 1670.

However, the history of this place begins much earlier. Already in the 12th century, there was a temple dedicated to St. Andrew here. The Jesuits received this church and several adjacent buildings in 1565 thanks to a donation from the Bishop of Tivoli. Shortly thereafter, thanks to another donation, they acquired the adjacent land, on which they built a new novitiate for the numerous candidates who were joining the order of Ignatius of Loyola.

One of them was a Pole, Stanislaus Kostka, who met the Jesuits at a college in Vienna, where he studied with his brother Paweł. Unable to obtain his parents’ consent to join the order, he fled in disguise, first to Bavaria and then to Rome, covering almost the entire distance on foot. He carried with him a letter of recommendation from St. Peter Canisius, then superior of the German province of the Jesuits, to the general of the order, St. Francis Borgia, in which we find the words: “we expect great things from him.” A copy of this letter, known as the Letter of the Three Saints, can be seen in the museum next to the church. On October 28, 1567, Stanislaus, along with 40 other candidates, began his novitiate in the monastery next to the present church of Il Gesù (its construction began a year later), as confirmed by an official document signed by Stanislaus and preserved in the Jesuit Archives. Only after three months did they move to the newly built novitiate house on the Quirinal Hill. Stanislaus, not yet 18 years old, died in the opinion of sanctity less than a year later, on August 15, 1568, after only a few days of illness. The cause of death was probably malaria, but spiritually it was certainly his great desire for God.

The relics of St. Stanislaus rest in one of the chapels of the church. From here, through the sacristy, you can enter the museum section, where you will find a reconstructed monk’s cell with a famous sculpture of St. Stanislaus on his deathbed by Pierre Legros, made of marble in various colors around 1700. It was about this sculpture that C.K. Norwid wrote a poem, which can be read on a plaque in the adjacent room.

“In the chamber where Saint Stanislaus fell asleep in God
In place of his bed stands a marble tomb;
One that makes the viewer pause involuntarily at the threshold,
Thinking that the saint has turned his face to the wall in his sleep (…).”

The walls of this extraordinary place are decorated with frescoes by Jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo depicting scenes from the life of Stanislaus. The same artist created, among others, impressive frescoes in the Church of the Gesu and St. Ignatius of Loyola, as well as in the preserved rooms of the founder of the Jesuits.

Kostka was not the only saint who completed his novitiate at St. Andrew’s Church. Eighteen years later, also against his parents’ will, a young aristocrat from Lombardy, Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga, joined the Jesuits. He died at the age of 23 as a seminarian, caring for plague victims. He received his last rites from his confessor, Robert Bellarmine, also a saint and patron saint of Pope Leo XIV.

A young Belgian, John Berchmans, was also sent to Rome to continue his education. He died like St. Stanislaus, after only a few days of illness, in August 1621, at the age of 22. He died in the Roman College, next to the cell where, 30 years earlier, St. Aloysius, whom he admired and imitated, had passed away. A month later, St. Robert Bellarmine died in the monastery of the novitiate church of St. Andrew on the Quirinal Hill. All three are buried in the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome. Aloysius, John, and Stanislaus are today the patrons of young people throughout the world.

Photos: CSFN
Facade of St. Andrew’s Church
P. Legros, St. Stanislaus on his deathbed
Plaque with a poem by C.K. Norwid
Church of St. Ignatius in Rome: Altars with relics of Robert Bellarmine, Aloysius Gonzaga, and John Berchmans