Saint John Mary Vianney

Jean-Marie Vianney was born in Dardilly, near Lyon, on May 8, 1786, the son of poor farmers. He grew up during the Revolution, when Mass in France was said in secret, in barns. He wanted to become a priest and couldn’t manage it: he didn’t understand Latin. His years in the seminary were an ordeal, and at one point he was sent away; Father Charles Balley, who believed in him, took him back and guided him. He was ordained almost as a favor, and his superiors sent him somewhere he couldn’t do any harm: Ars, a village of two hundred thirty souls where hardly anyone went to Mass. He stayed there forty-one years. What he did was, essentially, sit in the confessional. At first a few people came, then the village, then the region, then all of France. In his last years he spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day hearing confessions, and a hundred thousand people a year came to Ars; the French railways created special tickets for the village. He tried to run away three times, to go to a monastery and pray in peace. Three times they brought him back. He died in Ars on August 4, 1859, at seventy-three. Pius XI proclaimed him a saint in 1925 and patron of all the parish priests in the world — the one who couldn’t keep up in school. If your name is Giovanni Maria, today is your name day.