Vincenzo Carafa

Vincenzo Carafa (5 May 1585 – 6 June 1649) was an Italian Jesuit priest and spiritual writer, elected the seventh Superior-General of the Society of Jesus. He wrote using the name Aloysius Sidereus.

Biography Carafa was born in Andria in the Kingdom of Naples (modern day Italy), of the family of the Counts of Montorio, and a relative of Pope Paul IV. He entered the Society of Jesus on 4 October 1604, and was 60 years of age at his election as general. He died in Rome four years later, aged 64.

He had taught philosophy and governed the principal house of the Society at Naples, and was provincial at the time of the election to the generalship.

In 1648 Carafa called the forty-year old letterato Daniello Bartoli from his itinerant activities as a preacher around Italy to the Casa Professa (Rome) and a permanent position there as the official historian of the Jesuit order. The folio volumes of his Istoria della Compagnia di Gesù began to appear in 1650. Bartoli soon after Carafa's death in 1649 wrote and published the biography of the Neapolitan general. It includes the 1646 episode of Bartoli's shipwreck in a storm off Capri and his recuperation in Naples. Pope Francis made reference to him in a list of Jesuit priests associated with devotion to the Sacred Heart in his 2024 encyclical letter on this subject, Dilexit nos.

Works In 1635 he had published his Fascetto di Mirra (Bundle of Myrrh), which has been translated into several languages. He is the author of several other ascetical works, such as Cammino del Cielo, Cittadino del Cielo, Il Peregrino della terra, Idea Christiani hominis, and Il Serafino, all published before his election as Superior-General. He wrote using the name "Aloysius Sidereus".