Saint Peter Canisius

Priest and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

December 21

Life

1521–1597

Canonized

1925

Doctor of the Church

1925

Order

Society of Jesus (Jesuits)

Born

Nijmegen, Duchy of Guelders (modern Netherlands)

Peter Kanis (Latinized as Canisius) was born on May 8, 1521, at Nijmegen in the duchy of Guelders, the son of the city's burgomaster. While studying at the University of Cologne he made a thirty-day Spiritual Exercises retreat under Blessed Peter Favre in 1543 - one of the original companions of Saint Ignatius - and immediately afterward entered the Society of Jesus, becoming the first Dutchman in the new Society. He was ordained priest in 1546.

Sent to Germany at the request of the Duke of Bavaria in 1549, he spent the rest of his life - some forty-eight years - at the front line of the Catholic Reformation in the German-speaking lands, where the Lutheran Reformation had swept the regions of his early ministry. He held successively the offices of Provincial of the new German Province of the Society (1556-1569), University rector at Ingolstadt and Vienna, court theologian to the Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, and theologian at the final session of the Council of Trent (1562-1563). Founder of Jesuit colleges at Vienna, Munich, Innsbruck, Dillingen, Fribourg, and elsewhere, he produced the three works that earned him the title Second Apostle of Germany: the Summa doctrinae christianae (1555, the major catechism for educated readers), the smaller Catechismus minor (1558, for children), and the Catechismus minimus (1556) for the youngest. These three Catechisms went through more than two hundred editions in his lifetime alone. He died at Fribourg on December 21, 1597. Pope Pius XI canonized him and declared him a Doctor of the Church on the same day, May 21, 1925.