Saint John Vianney
Priest
- Feast Day
- August 4
- Life
- 1786–1859
- Canonized
- 1925
- Born
- Dardilly, near Lyon, France
Saint John Marie Baptiste Vianney was born at Dardilly, near Lyon, on May 8, 1786, the fourth of six children of a peasant farming family. His childhood coincided with the most violent phase of the French Revolution; his First Communion was made clandestinely in 1799 in a barn where a refractory priest celebrated Mass at night.
Drafted into Napoleon's army in 1809, he was unable to join his unit because of illness and unintentionally became technically a deserter. After an amnesty he resumed studies for the priesthood, struggling especially with Latin. Ordained priest on August 12, 1815, in the chapel of the Major Seminary of Grenoble, he served as curate at Ecully under the Abbe Balley, who completed his ecclesiastical formation. In February 1818 he was appointed parish priest of the small village of Ars-en-Dombes (Ars-sur-Formans), then religiously indifferent, where he was to spend the remaining forty-one years of his life.
By preaching, catechizing the children, by his austere fasts (often a single boiled potato a day), by his all-night vigils in prayer and combat with the devil, and above all by his ministry in the confessional, Vianney transformed Ars into one of the great centers of Catholic religious revival in nineteenth-century Europe. From the 1830s onward, between thirty and ninety thousand pilgrims a year came to Ars to confess to him; in his last years he heard confessions for sixteen to eighteen hours a day. The French railways established a special pilgrim ticket to Ars, and the Archbishop of Paris organized special pilgrim trains.
Three times Vianney attempted to leave the parish for a contemplative life; three times he was brought back. He died at Ars on August 4, 1859, in his seventy-fourth year. His body, found incorrupt at the canonical recognition in 1904, is venerated in the basilica of Ars beside the parish church.
Pope Saint Pius X beatified him on January 8, 1905; Pope Pius XI canonized him on May 31, 1925, and on April 23, 1929, declared him patron of all parish priests of the universal Church. Pope Benedict XVI, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his death, proclaimed a Year for Priests (June 19, 2009 to June 19, 2010) under his patronage, in his Letter Proclaiming a Year for Priests of June 16, 2009.
The Cure of Ars is the universal Catholic icon of the parish priest. Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 Letter for the Year for Priests held him up to the world's clergy as the model of pastoral charity, the priest who lived for nothing but the salvation of his people. His Catechetical Instructions and his sermons have been published in many editions; his confessional, preserved at Ars, is the most-visited single confessional in the Catholic world.
Patronages
parish priests (universal) · confessors
Catholic Churches Named After Saint John Vianney
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint John Vianney's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St. John Vianney Mission — Esigodini
- St John Vianney's, Alva — Alva, SCOTLAND
- St. John Vianney Parish — Kidapawan City, COTABATO PROVINCE
- Saint John Vianney Catholic Church — Prince Frederick, MD
- St John Vianney, Burnside — Burnside, SA
- St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church — Town of Orchard Park, NY
- St John Vianney — Clayhall, ESSEX
- St. John Vianney — La Ronge, SK
- St. John Vianney Parish — Scott Twp., PA
- Saint John Vianney Chapel — Balboa Island, CA
- St. John Vianney — Hacienda Heights, CA
- St. John Vianney — Gallatin, TN
- Saint John Vianney Catholic Church — Bell City, LA
- Saint John Vianney Catholic Church — Belgrade, MT
- St. John Vianney Parish - St. Gabriel — Hammondsport, NY
- St. John Vianney — Wyoming, MI
- St. John Vianney — Lithia Springs, GA
- St. John Vianney Catholic Church — Fairmont, MN
- St. Mary Church (St. John Vianney Parish) — Eagle Lake, ME
- St. John Vianney Church — South Burlington, VT
Sources