St. John Francis Regis (1597-1640)

Feast day: June 16

Although his work and fame are local, St. John Francis Regis is one of the great figures of the counter-Reformation. Born in Languedoc, at Fontcouverte on January 1st, 1597, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Toulouse on November 8th, 1616. He spent almost all his short life preaching the faith in the wild, mountainous country of the Velay and Vivarais. This region, in common with the area further to the south, had suffered much in the wars of religion, and there had been many conversions to protestantism.

John Francis, a man of great austerity of life, adapted his apostolate to the needs of his time. In the words of Goyau, he preached 'from farm to farm ... to souls one by one when he could not gather them into groups.' Like his great compatriot, St. Vincent de Paul, he was not content with verbal preaching alone. He practised the corporal works of mercy to a heroic degree. His room was always full of clothes, furniture, odds and ends of all kinds which he had collected for the poor. One of the causes dearest to his heart and for which he worked unceasingly was the reclamation of prostitutes.

His forthrightness, intrepedity and courage inevitably raised up enemies against him. There were those who took scandal at his unusual methods; there were those of evil life who resented his condemnation of their ways. Even among the clergy of the Vivarais, those whom he reproached for infidelity to their vocation, banded together to impede his apostolate. He was delated to the bishop of Viviers and for a time he was 'under a cloud.'

But this trial was only temporary. In obedience to his religious superiors before whom he had laid plans for a great extension of his work--at one time he wished to join his fellow Jesuits of the Canadian mission--he continued his evangelization of the Vivarais. He never spared himself. During the last four months of his life, he heard ten thousand confessions. Exhausted by such labours, he died at La Louvesc on December 12th, 1640. He was beatified by Clement XI in 1716 and canonized by Clement XII in 1737.

A basilica was built above his tomb, which soon became and has ever since remained one of the great French centers of pilgrimage. Among the thousands who have come to this church high up in the mountains of the Ardèche, none is so well-known as St. John Vianney, who at the grave of St. John Francis prayed during a period of crisis in his own life.

The burning apostolic spirit of this great Jesuit still broods over the mountains and scattered villages of the land he reclaimed for the church. His work has endured, and the faith remains firm and secure in the Ardèche. His spirit lives on also in religious institutes which, although not founded by him, are inspired by his ideals and methods. Mention should be made in particular of the Nuns of the Cenacle, whose mother-house is at La Louvesc, and whose work for the instruction and education of the laity is so well known.

The problems of the apostolate in our own time are not dissimilar to those John Francis faced, and his combination of preaching and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy is as essential in the twentieth century as it was in the seventeenth.

Courtesy of Catholic Information Network (CIN)