Description

Oil Dedicated to St Thommaso da Olera

St Thommaso da Olera (1563 – 3 May 1631) born Tommaso Acerbi. A Roman Catholic Italian professed religious from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. Acerbis lived as a Franciscan beggar and as a religious who provided spiritual advice.

Consolation to a number of people that included Leopold V and his wife. He beatified in Bergamo on 21 September 2013 in which Cardinal Angelo Amato presided on the behalf of Pope Francis.

Tommaso Acerbis born in 1563 to poor parents. He worked as a shepherd as a child without ever having received proper schooling. He joined the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin on 12 September 1580 in Verona.

At the convent of Santa Croce di Cittadella where aged seventeen he learnt how to read and write. He made his solemn profession on 5 July 1584.

She served in the convents in Verona (1605–12) and Vicenza (1612-17) as well as Rovereto (1617–18). He later sent to Padua in 1618 as the convent’s porter. While not long after in 1619 he sent to a new province of the order in Austria.

At the request of the archduke Leopold V. Out of those convents he visited the sick people and also helped the poor. He often encouraged and championed a love of the faith to those who listened to him.

When Lutheranism began to take root in the area he spoke out and also wrote in defense of the Roman Catholic Church. He chose not to confront but to instead speak on his love of ‘the impassioned Christ’.

The church that he founded. In Vicenza he sponsored the opening of a convent for the Poor Clares which from 1612-3 as built at Porta Nuova.

Built in 1642 and there that he met and spiritually guided the Servant of God Bernardina Floriani. In 1617 became a friend and the spiritual director of the scientist Ippolito Guarinoni.

He also a spiritual guide to the archduke. His wife Claudia de’ Medici and Acerbis frequently met and corresponded with the two. He died in mid-1631 in Innsbruck. His remains housed in Innsbruck.