Saint John Vianney

Jean-Marie Vianney was born on 8 May 1786 at Dardilly, near Lyon, into a farming family. He grew up during the French Revolution, when priests were hunted and Mass was said in secret in barns and farmhouses. He made his First Communion secretly, behind shutters closed during a haymaking, and he admired the brave priests who risked their lives to serve the people.

He wanted to be a priest, but he had little schooling, and Latin was a torment to him. His studies were interrupted when he was called up for Napoleon’s army. He failed examinations and was nearly sent away from the seminary. Only the persistence of his mentor, the Abbé Balley, and his evident goodness got him through. He was ordained in 1815.

In 1818 he was sent to Ars, a village of about two hundred and thirty people north of Lyon. “There is not much love of God in that parish,” the vicar-general told him. “You will put some there.” He prayed for hours before the tabernacle, fasted, visited every family, taught the catechism and preached against dancing, drunkenness and working on Sundays. Slowly the village changed.

Then people began to come from far away to confess to him. By the end of his life tens of thousands came every year, and special trains ran from Lyon. He spent twelve, fifteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day in the confessional. He knew souls, and he suffered attacks from the devil, but he stayed humble and poor, and several times tried to run away to a monastery. He died on 4 August 1859. He was canonized in 1925 and named patron of parish priests in 1929.