Gennaro Maria Sarnelli

Gennaro Maria Sarnelli (12 September 1702 – 30 June 1744) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and a professed member from the Redemptorists. Sarnelli was one of Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori's earliest companions and a prolific writer on a range of religious topics. He wanted to become a Jesuit though was dissuaded from this before working in the Hospital of the Incurables where his call to the priesthood blossomed. His apostolic zeal knew no limits: he preached missions and aided his friend Liguori in his work; he tended to the sick and helped to get girls out of prostitution despite the threats levelled against him.

Sarnelli's fame for holiness was a well-known fact during his life. His beatification cause opened in 1861 in Naples; formal introduction came in 1874 and he was named as Venerable on 2 December 1906. Pope John Paul II beatified him in mid-1996.

Life Gennaro Maria Sarnelli was born in Naples on 12 September 1702 as the fourth of eight children (two females and six males) to Angelo Sarnelli (the Baron of Ciorani) and Caterina Scoppa in the Zapata Palace in the Piazza Trieste e Trento. He studied jurisprudence and earned his doctorate in civil and canon law in 1722.

Sarnelli became quite successful and was enrolled in the Congregation of the Knights of the Legal and Medical Professions directed by the Pious Workers of Saint Nicholas of Toledo. One of the rules of this association was visiting the sick in the Hospital of the Incurables. It was while tending to the ill in the hospital that his call to become a priest developed to the point he could not ignore it. The confirmation of his life of heroic virtue allowed for Pope Pius X to name him as Venerable on 2 December 1906.

His old friend St. Alphonsus Liguori was his first biographer.

A complete edition of Sarnelli's works, Opere complete del Ven. Servo di Dio, P.D. Gennaro Maria Sarnelli was published in 1889 at Naples, by the Tipografia Largo S. Martino, No. 4, as follows: Il Mondo santificato (1737), 2 volumes Il Mondo reformato, 2 volumes L'Anima illuminata L'Anima desolata Il Cristiano illuminato, dirretto ed ammaestrato Il Cristiano santificato Le Glorie e Grandezze della Divina Madre Devozioni pratiche per onorare la SS. Trinita e Maria Santissima e Devozioni per apparecchio ad una buona morte Lettere spirituali Della discrezione degli Spiriti L'Ecclesiastico Santificato Contro il vizio della bestemmia Ragioni Cattoliche, legali e politiche, contro il meretricio Vita del Ven. Servo di Dio P.D. Gennaro Sarnelli del P. François Dumortier.

Not included in above is the two-volume, La via facile e sicura del Paradiso (1738) cited in St. Alphonsus Liguouri, Apparecchio alla Morte, Cons. 11.1, published anonymously.