Feast day: August 1

St. Alphonsus Liguori

Bishop & Doctor of the Church · 1696–1787

Patron of Confessors, moral theologians, arthritis sufferers

Brilliant Naples lawyer who lost one case, saw through worldly success, became a priest, and founded the Redemptorists to preach to the rural poor.

Alphonsus Liguori was born near Naples in 1696 and was a prodigy, earning doctorates in both civil and canon law and becoming a brilliant young lawyer while still in his teens. His legal career ended abruptly when he lost an important case through a technicality he had overlooked; shaken, and increasingly aware of God's call, he gave up the law and, against his father's wishes, became a priest.

He gave himself to the poorest and most neglected people of the kingdom of Naples — the laborers, herdsmen, and country folk whom the fashionable preachers ignored. To carry this mission on, in 1732 he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the Redemptorists, an order of missionary priests devoted to preaching to the abandoned poor in plain language they could understand.

He became the most influential moral theologian of his era. Against both a harsh rigorism that crushed consciences and a careless laxity that excused everything, he charted a balanced, merciful path that earned him the title 'prince of moral theologians' and made him the patron of confessors and moralists. He was also a tremendously popular devotional writer, whose works like 'The Glories of Mary' and 'Visits to the Blessed Sacrament' were read by millions.

Made a bishop late in life, he governed his poor diocese with reforming zeal until ill health forced his retirement, and his last years were darkened by illness, scruples, and a painful struggle within his own order. He died in 1787 at ninety-one, was canonized in 1839, and was declared a Doctor of the Church.

He passed the bar at 16 and reportedly never lost a case in 8 years — until the one loss that drove him to a far better verdict.

“He who prays is certainly saved; he who does not pray is certainly damned.”
— St. Alphonsus Liguori

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01334a.htm