St. Francis of Sales

St. Francis de Sales was born on August 21, 1567, at the Château de Sales in the Duchy of Savoy, the eldest son of an aristocratic family destined for a career in law and public life. He studied in Paris and took a doctorate in law at Padua, but a long interior struggle over God's mercy, resolved in prayer before an image of Our Lady, confirmed his sense of vocation. Against his father's wishes he was ordained a priest in 1593. Francis volunteered for the dangerous mission to the Chablais, a region south of Lake Geneva that had become almost entirely Calvinist. Rather than force or polemic, he chose patience and charity, walking from village to village and slipping handwritten leaflets under doors, an apostolate of the pen that later made him the patron of writers and journalists. Over several years, large numbers of the region's people returned to the Catholic faith. Consecrated bishop of Geneva in 1602, though obliged to reside at Annecy because Geneva itself was closed to Catholics, Francis became one of the great spiritual directors of his age. His Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), written for laypeople, taught that genuine holiness is possible in every walk of life, and his Treatise on the Love of God explored the soul's path to divine union. His constant counsel of gentleness, 'a spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a barrelful of vinegar,' earned him the affectionate title of the Gentleman Saint. With St. Jane Frances de Chantal he founded the Visitation of Holy Mary in 1610, a contemplative order welcoming women unable to bear the austerities of other communities. Francis died of a stroke at Lyon on December 28, 1622, while returning from a journey. He was canonized in 1665 by Pope Alexander VII and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1877 by Pope Pius IX; Pope Pius XI named him patron of writers and journalists in 1923. His feast is kept on January 24, and his relics rest with those of St. Jane de Chantal in the Basilica of the Visitation at Annecy, France. St. John Bosco placed his own congregation, the Salesians, under his patronage, extending his gentle spirit into the modern world.