Thanks to everyone who has suggested Saints for my November posts -- keep your requests coming. For my sister, Tonya, we will start the month with St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney - known in English as John Vianney.
John was born in France in 1786, the fourth of six children. During the anticlerical Terror phase of the French Revolution, many Parish Priests had to go into hiding, so the Vianney family often traveled to distant farms to attend Masses celebrated by Priests on the run. Young John recognized that these men risked their lives to do this and he started to look on them as heroes. As a young man, Vianney struggled with school, especially Latin, due in part to the early interruption of his education by the Revolution. Throughout his formation for the priesthood, he was considered slow and ignorant. It took him years of intense study and private tutoring before he was granted ordination to the priesthood in 1815.
In 1818, John Vianney was appointed parish priest of the parish of Ars, a town of 230 inhabitants. As a Parish Priest, he realized that the devastation wrought on the Catholic Church by the French Revolution had left the people ignorant and indifferent to their faith. He used his homilies to teach against blasphemy, pagan dancing, drunkenness and obscene language (reading a list of cuss words from the pulpit to ensure that his parishioners knew which words were unacceptable). Like his parishioners, he worked hard and lived poor, living mainly on milk and potatoes. He developed a reputation as a perceptive and compassionate confessor and was soon hearing confessions 10 hours every day. His reputation spread and people came from all over France, Europe and a few even from America to confess to him and hear him preach.
John Vianney died in 1859 at the age of 73. More than 6000 people attended his funeral. He is the Patron Saint of Parish Priests -- so I encourage you to ask for his intercession for your pastor.
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