Saint of the Day, August 1

Saint Alphonsus (1696–1787), Neapolitan lawyer and bishop, founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer — the Redemptorists — for missions to the rural poor whom the city clergy of his day neglected. He wrote more than a hundred books, of which the Glories of Mary and the Moral Theology became universal references in Catholic seminaries for two centuries. Against the rigorist Jansenism of his time he defended a moderate moral system founded on the mercy of Christ. He suffered crippling arthritis for the last decades of his life and continued to write with his head bent permanently against his chest. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1871 and patron of confessors and moralists in 1950.