Antoninus of Sorrento

Saint Antoninus of Sorrento was born at Campagna in southern Italy and died around 625. Drawn early to the monastic life, he left his hometown to become a monk at Monte Cassino. In those troubled years, barbarian invasions ravaged the land, and when the Lombards plundered the great monastery, the community fled toward Rome. Antoninus instead returned to Campania, where he met Bishop Catellus of Castellammare di Stabia. Though Catellus longed for solitude and tried to entrust his diocese to Antoninus, the saint’s own desire for a hidden life led him to urge the bishop back to his pastoral duties while he himself withdrew to Monte Aureo, living as a hermit in a grotto. Tradition remembers an apparition of Saint Michael that inspired Antoninus and Catellus to build a stone church on the mountain. Later, the people of Sorrento asked Antoninus to come among them, and he became abbot of the Benedictine monastery of San Agrippino. Venerated as patron of Sorrento and Campagna, he is especially loved for miracles of protection, including the saving of a child from a whale. His feast day is February 14.