St. John of God, Patron of the Sick and Dying
On March 7, the Church honors St. John of God, Founder of the Order of the Brothers Hospitalers, which bears his name. He is the patron of the sick, the dying, firefighters, and alcoholics. St. John of God was born on March 8, 1495 in a small village in the south of Portugal called Montemor-o-Novo. At the age of eight, he left home and was raised by a Spanish family in Oropesa. John spent most of his life as a wanderer, working as a shepherd, soldier, a religious bookseller and laborer, traveling in Europe and North Africa. When St. John of God settled in Granada around the age of forty he was so deeply moved by a homily of Blessed John of Avila, that he gave away all his worldly possessions to the poor and went about the city beating his breast, begging for God’s mercy. His conversion experience was so dramatic in its intensity that he was locked up in a lunatic asylum, where he was flogged and placed in solitary confinement. His brief experience of this kind of treatment ...