St. John Eudes

St. John Eudes was born on November 14, 1601, at Ri in Normandy, France, the son of a farming family. Educated by the Jesuits at Caen, he entered the French Oratory in 1623 under Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle and was ordained a priest in 1625. His early ministry was marked by heroic charity: twice he volunteered to care for victims of the plague, living apart in a field so as not to endanger his confreres. For two decades he labored as one of the most effective mission preachers in seventeenth-century France, conducting well over a hundred parish missions that could last weeks and draw whole regions to confession and renewal. The missions convinced him that lasting reform depended on well-formed priests, and in 1643 he left the Oratory to found the Congregation of Jesus and Mary — the Eudists — dedicated to running seminaries and preaching missions. Earlier, in 1641, moved by the plight of women trying to leave prostitution, he had founded the Order of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge at Caen, a work from which the Good Shepherd Sisters would later spring. John Eudes' deepest legacy is devotional. Before the revelations at Paray-le-Monial were widely known, he was composing liturgical texts and promoting public feasts in honor of the Holy Heart of Mary (first celebrated in 1648) and the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1672), and his writings, including The Kingdom of Jesus and The Admirable Heart of Mary, laid the theological groundwork for the devotion. For this, Pope Pius XI called him the father, doctor, and apostle of the liturgical devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He died at Caen on August 19, 1680. Beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909 and canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925, he is remembered on August 19. The Eudists continue his work of priestly formation and mission on several continents, and he remains a foundational figure for all devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.