St. John of God

Their story

John was born in Portugal in 1495. As a young boy he left home and ended up in Spain, where he worked as a shepherd and later as a soldier. For many years he drifted from job to job and lived without much thought of God. Around the age of forty he settled in Granada and earned his living selling religious books and pictures. In 1537 John heard a sermon by St. John of Ávila that shook him to the core. Overcome with sorrow for his sins, he ran through the streets weeping, giving away everything he owned. People thought he had lost his mind, and he was locked in the city's hospital for the insane. There he saw how cruelly the mentally ill were treated. When John of Ávila visited him, he encouraged John to turn his strong feelings into practical love for others. In 1539 John rented a house in Granada and filled it with the sick and the poor. He went out each day with a basket, begging for them and calling out, "Brothers, do good to yourselves!" He bathed and fed his patients himself and treated each one with dignity. Others came to help him, and after his death they became the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, who still run hospitals around the world. Tradition says he once carried patients out of a burning hospital. In early 1550 he jumped into a river to save a young man from drowning and became seriously ill. He died on March 8, 1550, his fifty-fifth birthday. He is a patron of the sick, nurses, hospitals and people with mental illness.