Saint John Leonardi, Priest
Feast day: Oct. 9
“Prefer Christ above all things.”
This was the motto of St. John Leonardi, who founded a congregation of diocesan priests: the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God. An Italian priest born in 1541, St. John worked to reform the Church by focusing on building up the clergy in Lucca, Italy, during the Counter-Reformation. Although initially a pharmacist’s assistant, he was later ordained a priest and was devoted to the catechetical instruction of children and young people. Recognized for his holiness and proficiency, St. John Leonardi was appointed by Pope Clement VIII to help reform three Benedictine monasteries in Italy to better follow monastic observance, even though John himself was not a monk. Yet, despite the support of his local bishop, many influential families in Lucca disliked St. John Leonardi and resented his fervent preaching against Protestantism. As a result, he was forced to live in exile outside of the city for most of his life.
St. John Leonardi was described by Pope Benedict XVI as a man conquered by Christ like the Apostle Paul. With ardent missionary zeal, St. John Leonardi lived a Christocentric ideal for which he was ready, like St. Paul, to rid himself of any personal interest and look only to serving God. He was born as the youngest of seven siblings in a faith-filled, hardworking middle class family. After 10 years of attending school to become a pharmacist, he chose to study for the priesthood instead of practicing pharmacology. Once ordained, he was active in works of charity at prisons and in hospitals and was a spiritual director to a group of young men who were studying to become priests. His communal life with this group became the foundation for the religious order he founded in Lucca.
Living fully the reform spirit of the Council of Trent, St. John Leonardi believed that improving the preaching and moral standards of the clergy was significant in reforming the Church. Commonly known as the Leonardini, the members of his order were devoted to education and pastoral care and were originally focused on combating Protestantism and to promoting the Counter-Reformation.
St. John Leonardi was encouraged by his close friend St. Philip Neri, who was also his spiritual director, to send members of his congregation on foreign missions. Together with a Spanish prelate, St. John was responsible for a project providing seminary training for priests to go on overseas missions and which eventually evolved into today’s College for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. St. Oliver Plunkett was one of its graduates who benefited from the College where he also taught before returning to Ireland. St. John Leonardi also founded the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for the promotion of the Catholic faith (eventually merged into the Dicastery for Evangelization).
Under persecution for his reform efforts, St. John Leonardi lived nearly all of his remaining years in banishment from Lucca and being admitted irregularly by a special political decree involving papal pressure. Nevertheless, he worked tirelessly to spread devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Forty Hours devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. He advocated frequent reception of the Eucharist. St. John Leonardi’s faith was strengthened by regularly venerating the “Holy Face” of Jesus, preserved in the Cathedral Church of Lucca.
Pope Benedict XVI described the love St. John Leonardi had for the Church as follows, “On various occasions he reasserted that the living encounter with Christ takes place in his Church, holy but frail, rooted in history and in its sometimes obscure unfolding, where wheat and weeds grow side by side (cf. Mt 13:30), yet always the sacrament of salvation. Since he was clearly aware that the Church is God’s field (cf. Mt 13:24), St John was not shocked at her human weaknesses. To combat the weeds he chose to be good wheat: that is, he decided to love Christ in the Church and to help make her, more and more, a transparent sign of Christ … He realized that every reform should be made within the Church and never against the Church.”
St. John Leonardi died in Rome after contracting influenza in caring for the plague-stricken.
Reflection
Dear Jesus, help me to make you the center of my life. May I love you so much that I become devoted to building up the Church you founded for the world’s salvation.
Prayer
O God, giver of all good things,
who through the Priest Saint John Leonardi
caused the Gospel to be announced to the nations,
grant, through his intercession,
that the true faith may always and everywhere prosper.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
