Voss tells CAB about trailblazing saint

St. Omobono of Cremona was a stranger when Paul John Voss – a lifelong Catholic with a keen interest in the saints – encountered the patron saint of business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Since Voss was a Georgia State University professor with extensive business consulting experience, he made a habit of asking businesspeople if they knew anything about their patron saint. 

“Not one person could ever answer me,” he told the Catholic Assembly for Business during the breakfast the group held on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at Wichita’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Next came online queries about St. Omobono, but Voss told CAB those yielded very little, so he turned to friend and University of Tulsa professor Donald Prudlo. The two began researching the obscure saint and, on their way to authoring Merchant Saint: The Church, the Market, and the First Lay Canonization – the first biography of St. Omobono in the English language – they became better acquainted with an Italian whose road to official recognition as a saint helped lead to the Church’s modern canonization process.

Miracles, please

When St. Omobono died in 1197, the massive crowd for his funeral hinted at an exceptional man, as did bodily remains that did not decay, Voss said. He added that “his incorrupt body, 829 years later, is still underneath the high altar in Cremona.”

Nevertheless, when people wrote to Pope Innocent III asking that Omobono be officially designated as a saint, the pope and his aides were not easily swayed. 

“(Advocates) wrote … ‘We think we have a saint in our midst,’” Voss said.

The pope and his representatives replied by saying, “Reputation on Earth is not good enough … We’re going to demand two miracles,” Voss said. “This was the first time in history that the Catholic Church demanded two miracles. It’s something that’s still done to this day to show … divine sanction.”

Omobono may have generated impressive business returns during his time on Earth, but those paled in comparison to those he generated from Heaven, Voss noted. “They got about 20 miracles, and he was canonized two years later,” Voss said. “He’s the only lay person in the entirety of the Middle Ages – for 800 years – who was canonized.”

According to Voss, the Church recognized faithful Catholics needed models of heroic virtue to help them navigate the complexities of life. “So, 500 years before there was even a term called ‘capitalism,’ the Church named somebody the patron saint of merchants and entrepreneurs,” he said. 

Voss highlighted a sentence in the opening passage from the bull of canonization: “It is difficult for one who practices business … to divest himself of religious indifference.”

“Even back in the 12th century, people were married to their work,” Voss said. “They were workaholics who didn’t give a day to the Lord because business demanded everything: their blood, sweat, toil, and tears. The Church said (St. Omobono) was saved from the perverse practices of the market because he was a daily communicant – and not only a daily communicant, he went to lots of vigils and matins. He was so often at the church, the priest finally gave him a key so he could let himself in.”

Recounting more about the saint’s life, Voss noted that by the time Omobono reached his 50s, he began to give the poor so much of his fortune that his family prevented it. Despite their initial success at stymieing those efforts, Omobono showed his entrepreneurial tenacity was adaptable. Next, the merchant and tailor with a large collection of silk clothes tried to give them away. After his wife forbade that, he started giving away all the family’s food.

“There was genuine tension until they came to an agreement,” Voss said. “He had some land outside of Cremona. He could grow grapes on that. He could sell the grapes, and all of the money he made from that side hustle – that gig economy – he was able to give away. So whenever you see him, he has … a purse in his hand – he’s giving his wealth away.”