Saint of the Day, August 4

Saint John Vianney (1786–1859), the Curé d'Ars, was a barely-literate French village priest of such failing intellect that he almost did not pass his ordination examinations. Assigned to the obscure hamlet of Ars-sur-Formans, he became the patron of parish priests through forty years of preaching, fasting, and confessions: by the end of his life he sat in the confessional sixteen to eighteen hours a day, hearing penitents who arrived from across France on the special Lyon-to-Ars railway built for the pilgrimage. He was, said John XXIII, the proof that 'the Curé d'Ars's true sermon was his life.'