Saint John Leonardi
Priest
- Feast Day
- October 9
- Life
- 1541–1609
- Canonized
- 1938
- Order
- Clerks Regular of the Mother of God
- Born
- Diecimo, Lucca, Italy
Giovanni Leonardi was born at Diecimo near Lucca in 1541. Trained as a pharmacist, he was ordained priest in 1572 and at once embarked on the catechetical reform of his native city in the spirit of the recently concluded Council of Trent (1545-1563). He gathered a band of laymen and clerics who in 1574 formed the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and in 1583 was approved as a religious community, the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God.
Working with his friend Saint Philip Neri, who lent him quarters at the Roman Oratory, and with Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, he was instrumental in 1603 in proposing to Pope Clement VIII the establishment of a college at Rome to form clergy for the foreign missions. The plan, taken up by his disciples and by the Capuchin Caracciolo, came to fruition in 1622 under Pope Gregory XV as the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), one of the most far-reaching institutions of the Catholic Reformation.
He died at Rome on 9 October 1609, ministering to victims of the plague. Pope Pius XI canonized him on 17 April 1938. Pope Saint John XXIII in 1959 named him patron of pharmacists, recalling his early profession.
John Leonardi exemplifies the Counter-Reformation's missionary realism: the conviction that the renewal of Catholic life required educated clergy, vigorous catechesis, and concrete institutional means for spreading the faith. The Propaganda Fide that grew from his efforts has, for four centuries, organized the Church's mission ad gentes.
Patronages
pharmacists · the Propagation of the Faith
Sources