Jean-Marie Vianney

Who they were

Jean-Marie Vianney was born on 8 May 1786 at Dardilly near Lyon to a farming family and was still unable to read at seventeen. During the Revolution he made his first confession at home and his First Communion in a barn at a clandestine Mass. Feeling called to the priesthood, he struggled with his studies and got through only with the help of priests such as the Abbé Balley of Écully; he was ordained on 13 August 1815, aged 29.

In 1818 he was sent to Ars, a village of 230 people, where he founded a home for orphans, visited the sick and poor and restored the church. Above all he heard confessions, up to sixteen hours a day, as penitents came from all over France, so that Ars became 'the great hospital of souls'. He did penance for his penitents: 'I give sinners a small penance and do the rest myself.' He died on 4 August 1859, aged 73.

The miracles

Pius XI named him patron of all parish priests in 1929. His shrine at Ars receives some 450,000 pilgrims a year.

Why that counted as sanctity

A farm boy who could barely learn Latin became the model of every parish priest, spending himself in the confessional for his people. 'If we really understood what a priest is on earth, we would die - not of fear, but of love.'