2
Father Fontanarosa was very simple in his habits himself; and he thought the best way to keep the Order simple was to keep it poor. Whenever anyone wanted to leave money to it, instead of encouraging them, he used to tell them of some other good work to which they might leave it.
One day there was a penitent of his who was very devoted to the Jesuits, a very rich nobleman, who came to die, and, as he was making his will, he would have Padre Fontanarosa and the notary present together. ‘I leave all of which I die possessed to the Church of the Gesù,’ dictated the rich nobleman.
‘What! do you leave all to the Son and nothing to the Mother!’ said Padre Fontanarosa, who knew he was too weak to argue with him as to whether the Order was better without the money or not, and therefore adopted this mode of avoiding the snare, without damaging the good purpose of the testator.
‘Ah! you are right,’ answered the dying man. ‘Thank you for reminding me. Make a codicil,’ he said to the notary, ‘and say I meant it for Gesù and Maria.’
The notary wrote just what he was bid, and the dying man and the witnesses signed all duly. But the money had to go, not to ‘the Gesù’ at all, but to the church of ‘Gesù e Maria’—you know where, at the end of the Corso, which doesn’t belong to the Jesuits at all, but to the Augustinians.