The Founder
The founder is Blessed James Cusmano
Born in Palermo on March 15, 1834, died on March 14, 1888 at only 54 years old, he dedicated his life for the service of the poor brothers in whom he saw Jesus in them. He belonged in a new Sicilian middle class family, a doctor together with Enrico Albanese, doctor of Garibaldi and founder of the Marino Asylum in Palermo, and Michele de Franchis
Cusmano was a doctor of the poor who crowded Palermo on the year 800 and at San Giuseppe Jato, where they owned plenty of land and houses. But in front of always growing misery (cholera, war of ’48 and ’60, riots on’66) and wanting to do more for the people he entered in the priesthood, a priest for the poor. Contemplating Jesus Himself in the person of the poor, he committed himself with all his strength and all his properties in begging for the poor, feeding those in hunger, and teaching the poor
He founded then, the “Mouthful for the Poor”
At the house of his friend De Franchis, he saw that in every banquet, before eating, everyone put aside a mouthful, with which a poor was fed. “If all the well-to-do people would do the same thing, how many poor people could be fed”.
And he went house to house searching for a mouthful, with which to feed many aged, boys and girls, children, youth, exploited …