St. John Cantius

St. John Cantius, also known as John of Kanty, was born in 1390 in the small town of Kęty in southern Poland, from which he takes his name. A gifted student, he entered the University of Kraków (the Jagiellonian University), earned degrees in philosophy and theology, was ordained a priest, and spent most of his life there as a professor. Apart from a brief and reportedly reluctant assignment as a parish priest at Olkusz, his world was the lecture hall, the confessional, and the streets of Kraków where the poor knew him best. Though respected for his learning — he copied out manuscripts of theology and Scripture in his own hand — John was famous above all for his humility and extravagant charity. Accounts of his life relate that he ate sparingly, slept on the floor, and repeatedly gave away his money, food, and even his clothes and shoes to the poor, walking home cold rather than let a beggar go without. Hagiographical tradition also tells of his pilgrimages, made on foot, to Rome and once to the Holy Land, and of homely miracles along the way; these stories, however embellished, preserve the memory of a man his contemporaries already regarded as a saint. He died in Kraków on December 24, 1473, and veneration began at once at his tomb in the university church of St. Anne, where his relics still rest and where students have long sought his intercession before examinations. Beatified in 1676, he was named a patron of Poland and Lithuania by Pope Clement XII in 1737 and canonized by Pope Clement XIII in 1767. His feast is kept on December 23, and he remains a model of the scholar whose learning is crowned by kindness — a favorite saint of teachers, students, and his beloved Kraków.