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The saints

St John Vianney

He nearly failed his way out of the seminary. Then all of France came to his confessional.

Feast: 4 August · 1786 to 1859 · Dardilly and Ars, France

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The Basilica of Ars-sur-Formans: a modern dome and an older bell tower above red tiled roofs.

Zairon, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St John Vianney

The seminary at Verrières, 1812

A young man from Dardilly, near Lyons, is struggling at the seminary.1

He is so deficient in Latin that he has to follow the philosophy course in French.1

Only the stubborn kindness of his old teacher kept him going. He was made priest of a tiny village called Ars.

01St John Vianney

The Curé of Ars

As the curé of Ars, in a remote French hamlet, he became known throughout France and the Christian world.1

In 1855, the number of pilgrims had reached twenty thousand a year.1

During the last ten years of his life, he spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional.1

02St John Vianney

Ars

He died at Ars on 4 August 1859.1

The Basilica of Ars-sur-Formans: a modern dome and an older bell tower above red tiled roofs.
The basilica at Ars-sur-Formans, built beside his old parish church. Zairon, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

He was not clever. He was available. That turned out to matter more.

Notes

  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. John Vianney”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision (public domain). Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an error.