Episode 17 -- Life of St Philip Bk II.17 -- Further Growth of the Fraternity

In this episode, we read about various ways St Philip’s Fraternity, the Confraternity of the Holy Trinity, developed into a famous charitable group. St Philip and his 15 friends had been looking after poor pilgrims and convalescents on a small scale. But when the Pope announced the Jubilee of 1550, hundreds of thousands of people made their way to Rome seeking a transformation of their spiritual lives. Many of these people were poor. St Philip and his fraternity opened a pilgrims’ hostile. Over time they were serving 500 people a day, 50,000 in that year. When the Jubilee ended, they used their new buildings for a concerted and serious effort to take care of all the convalescents being discharged from hospital before they were ready.