Saint John of Kanty
Priest
- Feast Day
- December 23
- Life
- 1390–1473
- Canonized
- 1767
- Born
- Kety, Lesser Poland
Jan z Kety, known in Latin as Joannes Cantius, was born on June 24, 1390, at Kety in the foothills of the Beskid mountains of Lesser Poland to a comfortable family of the local burgher class. He studied at the University of Krakow, founded only forty-six years before by Saint Hedwig of Anjou and her husband King Wladyslaw II Jagiello, took successive degrees there, and was ordained priest. After a period as rector of a Cistercian school at Miechow, he returned to Krakow in 1429 and held the chair of Sacred Scripture at the University until his death forty-four years later.
Despite his academic standing he lived in extreme personal austerity, refusing all but the simplest food, sleeping on the floor, going barefoot, and giving most of his salary to the poor. The bare facts of his life are unspectacular: he made four pilgrimages to Rome and one to Jerusalem; he taught Scripture, philosophy, and theology to generations of Polish clergy; he served also as parish priest at Olkusz and at Saint Anne's parish near the University. The popular Polish memory preserved many stories of his charity (he is said to have given his cloak to a beggar four times in a single day, the cloak miraculously reappearing each time) and of his mildness with students - even when shouted down or contradicted in the lecture hall, he would, according to the tradition, simply pause and continue. He died on Christmas Eve 1473. Pope Clement XIII canonized him in 1767. He is a national patron of Poland.
John of Kanty is the patron of the academic life lived as a vocation: rigorous in scholarship, austere in person, generous to the poor, mild with students. He represents the late-medieval Polish flowering of theological and philosophical learning that prepared the great Catholic culture of seventeenth-century Poland.
Patronages
Poland · Lithuania · professors · students
From Saint John of Kanty
"Fight all error, but do it with good humor, patience, kindness, and love."
Catholic Churches Named After Saint John of Kanty
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint John of Kanty's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St. John the Evangelist — Logan, KS
- Saint John the Baptist — South Bend, IN
- St. John the Baptist Parish — Chinsali
- St. John the Baptist Parish — Bulawayo
- St. John Vianney Mission — Esigodini
- St. John Baptist - Birunduma
- Church of St. John the Baptist, Sungai Siput — Sungai Siput, PERAK
- St John's
- St. John the Baptist Catholic Church — Prentice, WI
- St. John's
- Sts. John and Paul Church (St. Mary Magdalene Parish) — New Maryland, NB
- John the Baptist - Bonnyrigg/Edensor Park — Bonnyrigg Heights, NSW
- Saint John’s Parish — Barraba, NSW
- St John the Baptist, Lismore — Lismore, VIC
- St John's, Skipton — Skipton, VIC
- St John the Apostle. Goolwa — Goolwa, SA
- St John Mary Vianney Church — Gnowangerup, WA
- St John's Church — Rangeway, WA
- St Johns Catholic Church — Iola, KS
- St John the Baptist Catholic Church — Tapanui
Sources