Saint Ignatius of Laconi

Saint Ignatius of Laconi was a Sardinian Capuchin, a lay brother who for nearly forty years went begging through the streets of Cagliari for his friary and for the poor. The Church commemorates him on May 11.

He was born on December 17, 1701, in Laconi in Sardinia, the second of nine children of poor and devout farmers. At baptism he received the names Francesco Ignazio Vincenzo, and until he entered religious life he went by the name Vincenzo. He never attended school and never learned to read or write. From childhood he went to Mass every day, and as a young man he worked with his father and brothers in the fields and with the herds.

In his youth he fell seriously ill and vowed to God that if he recovered he would join the Capuchins, but afterward he did not keep his word. The bull of canonization relates that he remembered his vow when his horse bolted toward a precipice; he then renewed the vow, and the animal suddenly calmed down. On November 3, 1721, Vincenzo went with his father to Cagliari. The provincial hesitated to accept a candidate in such frail health, but he agreed after the Marquis of Laconi interceded. The young man received the habit and the name Ignatius, and on November 10, 1722, he made his religious vows as a brother.

After his novitiate he was sent to the friary at Iglesias, where he looked after the storeroom and collected alms among the farmers. For fifteen years he lived in various friaries of Sardinia, and then in Cagliari he worked in the friary’s weaving workshop, although he had no skill for it. In 1741 his superiors entrusted him with the alms collection in the city.

From then on he went from door to door every day with his alms bag. As he asked for bread for the brothers and for the poor, he spoke with people about God, reconciled those who quarreled, and urged sinners to conversion. He taught children the truths of the faith and visited the sick, and although he himself lived on alms, he helped those in need. At times he spent whole nights in prayer in church. Even in his lifetime many miracles were attributed to him. According to tradition, a merchant who had grown rich by wronging the poor complained to the guardian that Brother Ignatius passed his house by. When, at his superior’s order, Ignatius accepted the man’s gifts, blood began to flow from the bag. Asked for an explanation, he replied: “Father, this is the blood of the poor.”

In the last years of his life he lost his sight and could no longer collect alms, yet he would not move to the infirmary and kept the order of community life to the end. He died in the Capuchin friary in Cagliari on May 11, 1781, in his eightieth year. People of every station in the city came to his funeral.

Pope Pius XII declared Brother Ignatius blessed on June 16, 1940, and on October 21, 1951, in St. Peter’s Basilica, he canonized him together with Anthony Mary Gianelli and Francis Xavier Mary Bianchi. In the formula of canonization he decreed that the saint’s memorial should fall on May 11, the day of his birth into heaven.