Feast day: June 16
St. John Francis Regis
A French Jesuit who tramped through the mountains of the Vivarais in all weather, preaching to the abandoned, reconciling sinners, and rescuing women from prostitution.
John Francis Regis was born in 1597 in the Languedoc region of southern France and entered the Society of Jesus as a young man. After his ordination he became one of the great missionaries of the French countryside, devoting himself to the poor and neglected of a land still scarred by the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants.
Tireless and physically tough, he tramped through the rugged, mountainous districts of the Vivarais and Velay in all weather, often through deep winter snow, to reach remote villages where the people had been left without instruction for years. He preached in plain words the people could grasp, heard confessions for hours on end, and brought countless lapsed and ignorant Catholics back to the faith.
His charity was as practical as it was spiritual. He founded hostels for the poor, gathered funds and food for the destitute, defended women seeking to leave a life of prostitution, and — famously — organized lace-making work for poor women so they could earn an honest living, which made him their patron.
He died in 1640 at the age of forty-three, worn out by his labours while on a winter mission. Canonized in 1737, he is honoured as a patron of the poor, of social workers, and of lacemakers. The future St. John Vianney drew the inspiration of his own vocation from a pilgrimage to Regis's tomb.
He set up workrooms making lace so that poor women had honest work, and died of exhaustion after preaching a winter mission on foot through the snow.
Image: Michel Ange Houasse (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08464a.htm
Get a story like this every Sunday.