St. John Eudes

Their story

John Eudes was born in 1601 in a farming village in Normandy, France. He joined the Oratory, a community of priests dedicated to renewing the clergy, and was ordained in 1625. Soon after, a plague struck Normandy. John volunteered to care for the sick and dying, and to avoid spreading the disease to his fellow priests, he lived for a time in a large barrel in a field. John became one of the great preachers of his day, leading more than a hundred parish missions across France that lasted for weeks and called whole towns to conversion. He saw that the Church needed better trained and holier priests, so in 1643 he founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, known as the Eudists, to run seminaries. He was also moved by the plight of women trying to leave prostitution, and he founded a community of sisters, Our Lady of Charity, to care for them. That work later gave rise to the Good Shepherd Sisters. Above all, John Eudes loved the Hearts of Jesus and Mary as symbols of their love for us. He wrote prayers and Masses in their honor and was the first to celebrate liturgical feasts of the Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, years before the devotion became widespread. Pope Leo XIII called him the father of devotion to the Sacred Hearts. He died on August 19, 1680, and was canonized in 1925.