Feast day: March 8

St. John of God

Religious Founder · 1495–1550

Patron of Hospitals, nurses, booksellers, the mentally ill

Portuguese soldier and bookseller whose dramatic conversion led him to found a hospital in Granada and an order that still runs hundreds of health facilities worldwide.

He was once committed to an asylum himself — and emerged determined to revolutionize how the mentally ill were treated.

“Labor without stopping; do all the good works you can while you still have the time.”
— St. John of God

Image: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.