St. John Leonardi

St. John Leonardi was born around 1541 at Diecimo, near Lucca in Tuscany, Italy. Apprenticed as a young man to an apothecary, he seemed destined for a career as a pharmacist, but he abandoned it to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1572. In the Lucca of the Counter-Reformation he threw himself into teaching catechism to children and young people, and in 1579 he organized the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine to carry on that work. In 1574 he gathered a small group of priests who would become the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, a congregation devoted to preaching, the sacraments, and the renewal of Christian life along the lines set out by the Council of Trent. The work met bitter political opposition in his native city — so much so that Leonardi spent most of his later life effectively exiled from Lucca — but the order received episcopal approval in 1583 and papal confirmation under Clement VIII. In Rome he found a friend and supporter in St. Philip Neri, who handed over to him his quarters (along with, tradition adds, his cat). Leonardi's zeal reached beyond Italy. Convinced that the Gospel needed well-trained heralds, he worked with the Spanish prelate Juan Bautista Vives on plans for a seminary to form priests for foreign missions — an initiative that later grew into the Urban College of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), which earned him a title as a co-founder of the Church's modern missionary training. He also served as a reformer of religious orders and, in a rule of life he proposed, urged that renewal of the Church must begin with those who would reform others. He died in Rome on October 9, 1609, of influenza and plague contracted while caring for the sick. Canonized by Pope Pius XI on April 17, 1938, he was named patron of pharmacists by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, in memory of his first trade. His feast is October 9, and his relics rest in the church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in Rome, home of his order, which continues his work today.