‘Camillian Pills’ is a column that begins today and will accompany us for the whole of the jubilee year.

We wanted this column because to make the history and the works of Camillians known about means to know about St. Camillus and his charism.

The works of charity, the missions and the histories of our Order in the world. Interviews and accounts about us, the heirs of St. Camillus. The testimonies of those who are always present, there where there are the sick and the suffering.

We begin today, in concomitance with the World Day for Mental Health, with the story of Fr. Thierry de Rodellec, former Superior of the Province of France. This is why:

‘With him a miracle is a daily event’: the story of Fr. Thierry and Gregoire

Thierry de Rodellec, who has been a Camillian of the Province of France for twenty-one years, began his spiritual journey with the accompanying of inner healing in a community near Paris, an accompanying that was very special half-way house between therapy and spiritual comfort.

After three years as master of novices he became the Provincial Superior of the Province of France, a mandate that lasted twelve years and which ended in May 2013.

It was at this moment that the idea of continuing his Camillian journey in Benin, a country that he has visited for at least a month every year, began to mature.

This wish to return to Africa was connected to his desire to take up again and bring his help to the centres for those suffering from mental illness that had been created and were managed by Gregoire Ahongbonon.

Gregoire Ahongbonon, who has been defined by many people as the Basaglia of Africa, began his adventure after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

On his return he began to come together with a group of companions for prayer (this was in the 1980s and many charismatic groups of prayer were being created inside the Catholic Church). But after a short period of time he felt the need to do other things, to help people in difficulty in a practical way, and thus he decided to begin to visit sick people in hospitals and prisons, an approach that was out of the ordinary given that at that time only Protestants, and not Catholics, visited the sick. This is why during their first visits the patients were very surprised to see them.

One day, while he was leaving one of these hospitals he saw a man who was completely naked who was looking for food in a rubbish bin. At that moment he heard a voice inside him: ‘You are looking for me in the Church, in the Eucharist and in prayer. But, don’t you see, I am in front of you, and what are you doing?’

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