Feast day: August 4

St. John Vianney

Priest, Curé of Ars · 1786–1859

Patron of Parish priests

A struggling seminarian assigned to a forgotten French village of 230 souls — who became so renowned a confessor that 100,000 pilgrims a year came to him.

Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney was born near Lyons in 1786, during the upheaval of the French Revolution, and grew up making his First Communion in secret while priests were hunted. He felt called to the priesthood but was a slow and struggling student; Latin defeated him again and again, and he was very nearly turned away as unfit. Only the patience of a mentor and the judgment that his goodness outweighed his poor learning got him ordained at last.

In 1818 he was sent as parish priest to Ars, a small, indifferent, out-of-the-way village, and there he spent the remaining forty-one years of his life. By prayer, penance, and relentless love he transformed the place, founding an orphanage, preaching plainly, and giving himself to his people without reserve, often praying through the night and eating almost nothing.

Above all he became the great confessor of his age. Word spread that the humble Curé of Ars could read hearts and counsel souls with rare wisdom and mercy, and penitents began to come — from neighboring parishes, then from across France, then from other countries — until in his last years he spent as many as sixteen or eighteen hours a day in the confessional, hearing tens of thousands of pilgrims a year.

He believed himself tormented by the devil for the souls he was winning back, and longed in vain to slip away to a monastery, but he could never abandon his people. He died exhausted at Ars in 1859. The priest once thought too dull to ordain was canonized in 1925 and named the patron saint of all parish priests — proof that holiness, not cleverness, makes the man of God.

He nearly flunked out of seminary over Latin. By the end, he was hearing confessions 16 hours a day and France was building special train lines to reach him.

“Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”
— St. John Vianney

Image: BarãoPandora (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08326c.htm