St. John of God
Patron of hospitals, nurses, the sick, booksellers, printers, heart patients, alcoholics
Saint John of God (1495–1550), Portuguese-born and converted late in life by a sermon of John of Ávila, gave the Church one of its great hospital orders. The conversion was so sudden and dramatic that he was briefly committed to an asylum in Granada, where the brutal conditions inspired his life's work. He rented a house, gathered the sick from the streets, and personally cared for them, walking the city at night with a basket on his back to beg for the poor. After his death his disciples organized themselves as the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, today serving in more than fifty countries.