St. John Mary Vianney
He heard confessions at Ars for sixteen hours a day, for anyone who came, through the last decade of his life, and taught the village catechism himself, every day, in the church.
Born 1786 · Died 1859 · Canonized 1925 · Beatified 1905
A lifelong Catholic
Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney was born at Dardilly, near Lyons, on 8 May 1786, to farming parents who took beggars into the house. He was seven when he began working the fields and minding sheep, and the Revolution had closed the churches: he made his first Communion at thirteen in a private house, in secret. At seventeen he still could not read.
Study nearly stopped him. Latin defeated him; he was, the encyclopedia says, of no more than average intelligence, and when he stood before the examiners at Lyons he was so frightened that his answers made no sense and he was sent away. A priest called Balley, who had taught him and believed in him, got him a second examination. He was ordained at twenty-nine, in August 1815, not so much on the title of learning, his canonization decree says, as on the marks of modesty and holiness.
In 1818 he was sent to Ars, a village of 230 people. His superior told him there was little love of God in that parish and that he would be the one to put it there. He stayed nearly forty years. He founded a house for destitute girls, taught the catechism daily until crowds came for it, and preached in pictures drawn from farms and fields. Then people began arriving to confess, from the next parish, then from across France. At the end the pilgrims were counted in tens of thousands a year, and he sat in the confessional sixteen hours a day.
He had passed seventy when he told the villagers, in the church one evening, the day he would die. Four days of illness later, on 4 August 1859, with priests crowding in from distant dioceses, he died at Ars. Pius XI canonized him on 31 May 1925.
What they carried
He was slow at his books and lost his nerve at the seminary examination; other priests reproached him for misdirected zeal; he tried more than once to leave Ars and was turned back. His canonization decree adds thirty-five years of nightly torment he attributed to the devil.
State of life
priest
Themes
prayer · confession and mercy · priesthood · hidden work · perseverance · ordinary work
Benedict XVI on the Curé of Ars (General Audience, 5 August 2009)
- Susan Tracy Otten, 'St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney', The Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8, New York, 1910 — the source of the childhood, the conscription, the studies, and the shape of the years at Ars. It fixes both ends of his life: born at Dardilly 'on 8 May, 1786', and 'died at Ars, 4 August, 1859'. It is blunter about him than anything written since: his knowledge was 'extremely limited', he found the study of Latin 'excessively difficult', and twice it says he was of no more than average intelligence. It also records what the last stretch cost him — 'During the last ten years of his life, he spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional.' https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08326c.htm — indexed at https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/j-ce.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/v-ce.htm, both of which give his death year as 1869 and are wrong.
- The line at the foot of that article reading 'In 1925, Pope Pius XI canonized him. His feast is kept on 4 August' is NOT part of the 1910 encyclopedia and is not used as a source here. It is a modern editorial insertion, set in square brackets and prefaced 'Note:'. The 1910 article itself stops fifteen years earlier, at the beatification: he 'was enrolled among the Blessed' on 8 January 1905, and 'Pope Pius X proposed him as a model to the parochial clergy'. The canonization in this record comes from the act itself, and the feast day from the calendar.
- Benedict XVI, General Audience, Castel Gandolfo, 5 August 2009, 'St. John Mary Vianney, the Holy Curé of Ars' — a whole catechesis on him, given the day after the 150th anniversary of his death, and the source of two things the encyclopedia does not say. That he was a farm child so long kept from school that 'at the age of 17 he was still illiterate'. And the hour of his death: 'it was at two o'clock in the morning on 4 August 1859 that St John Baptist Mary Vianney, having come to the end of his earthly life, went to meet the heavenly Father'. The pope also gives the ordination in two stages — deacon on 23 June 1815, priest 'on the following 13 August' — and his age, 29. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090805.html
- Benedict XVI, Letter Proclaiming a Year for Priests on the 150th Anniversary of the Dies Natalis of the Curé of Ars, 16 June 2009 — the fullest modern account of what he actually did at Ars, and the source of the village's size and of the sentence he was sent there with. Ars was 'a village of 230 souls', and his bishop warned him first: 'There is little love of God in that parish; you will be the one to put it there.' The letter also states plainly what the older biography does not — that the confessional nearly broke him, and that he thought of going: 'he often trembled from a conviction of his personal inadequacy, and desired more than once to withdraw from the responsibilities of the parish ministry out of a sense of his unworthiness. Nonetheless, with exemplary obedience he never abandoned his post.' https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20090616_anno-sacerdotale.html
- Pius XI, Decretal Letter Christi nomen, 31 May 1925 — the act. Its heading says what it does: 'PAROCHO VICI «ARS», HONORES SANCTORUM DECERNUNTUR', the honours of the saints are decreed to the parish priest of the village of Ars. The operative clause declares him 'Sanctum esse et... in Sanctorum catalogo adscribi' — to be a Saint and to be entered in the catalogue of the saints — and he was raised with Blessed John Eudes in the same decree, in St Peter's, on 'die trigesima prima mensis maii' of 1925. The decree also carries his death at more length than the encyclopedia does: having passed seventy, he called the villagers into the church one evening and foretold the day; after four days of illness, having received the sacraments, before priests who had hurried in from distant dioceses, he died 'die quarta mensis augusti, glorioso Patriarchae Sancto Dominico sacro, anno millesimo octingentesimo quinquagesimo nono'. https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/la/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-xi_apl_19250531_beatus-vianney.html
- The 1925 decree fixes his feast on 9 August and the Church now keeps it on 4 August; the calendar is right and the decree is not being followed here. Christi nomen orders 'memoriam Sancti Ioannis Baptistae Mariae Vianney die nona mensis augusti quotannis celebrandam et in Martyrologium Romanum referendam' — the ninth of August. The General Roman Calendar prints 'St John Mary Vianney, Priest' against 4 August, as a memorial, which is his death day.
- No declaring act is held, so no patronage is recorded here, and this is the closest the corpus has come to one without holding it. He is called patron of parish priests everywhere, and the Holy See uses the title constantly: Benedict XVI, greeting English-speaking pilgrims on 5 August 2009, called him 'St John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, who is the patron saint of parish priests', and his letter of 16 June 2009 calls him 'the patron saint of parish priests worldwide'. A footnote to that letter goes further and names the act: 'He was proclaimed as such by Pope Pius XI in 1929' — and the Italian edition says the same, 'Tale lo ha proclamato il Sommo Pontefice Pio XI nel 1929'. So a pope has named the author and the year. The act itself is not published where this corpus can reach it; the 1925 canonization decree, which had the occasion, does not make the declaration, telling parish priests only to imitate him — 'Praesertim vero sanctum Ioannem Baptistam Mariam Vianney imitentur sacerdotes illi, qui parochiali munere funguntur' — and stopping four years short; and the calendar, which prints 'St John Mary Vianney, Priest' against 4 August, records no patronage for him or for anyone. The same rule leaves Cecilia, Monica, Anthony of Padua and Faustina empty.
- The two biographies disagree about numbers and this record follows neither blindly. On pilgrims: the encyclopedia says that in 1855 the number 'had reached twenty thousand a year', while the 1925 decree puts it, for the last part of his life, at 'octoginta circiter convenientium millia' — about eighty thousand. The two may both be true of different years, four apart, and neither source shows its working. On the confessional: the encyclopedia has 'from sixteen to eighteen hours a day' for the last ten years, and Benedict XVI's letter has 'up to sixteen hours a day'. The summary above says tens of thousands and sixteen hours, which is the range both sources support rather than the highest figure either offers.
- What he had to carry is in every document held, and the decree is the frankest. On the studies: 'ingenio tardus et memoria infirmus' — slow of mind and weak of memory. On the examination at Lyons, which the encyclopedia reports only as a failure: he was seized with such fear that 'incongruas responsiones dederit, ideoque dimissus fuerit' — he gave incoherent answers and so was sent away. On what came from his own side: besides the opposition of bad men there were 'minas et censuras, etiam ex parte sacerdotum, illum praepostero zelo exprobrantium' — threats and censures, from priests too, reproaching him for misdirected zeal. On the flight: he did leave, and weather turned him back, and his superiors read that as a sign 'ne parochus vicum Ars relinqueret'. And the decree records thirty-five years of nightly disturbance he ascribed to the devil: 'Per triginta quinque fere annos perstitit tam terribilis cruciatus Satanae'.