Saint John of God

Saint John of God was a religious who opened a hospital for the poor and the sick in sixteenth-century Granada. From the circle of his companions grew the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God, the Brothers Hospitallers. The Church commemorates him on March 8, the day of his death.

He was born in 1495 in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, as João Cidade, in Spanish Juan Ciudad. As a boy of eight he left his family home and came to Oropesa in Spain, where he grew up in the house of an overseer of flocks and tended sheep for many years. Twice he enlisted in the army of Emperor Charles V: first he fought against the French, and later he set out for Vienna against the Turks.

After his service ended, he searched for his place for a long time. He visited his native region, was a shepherd near Seville, and then crossed over to Africa, where by the work of his own hands he supported the family of a Portuguese exile. Back in Spain, he wandered around the Gibraltar area selling books and holy pictures. In the end he settled in Granada and opened a small bookshop there.

The turning point came in 1539, when John was over forty. A sermon by Saint John of Ávila moved him so deeply that he gave away his belongings and cried aloud for God’s mercy in the streets of the city. He was taken for a madman and locked up in the Royal Hospital. There he experienced for himself how cruelly the mentally ill were treated at the time. John of Ávila became his spiritual director.

After leaving the hospital and making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Guadalupe, John began to take in the sick and the homeless in Granada. He rented a house for them and later set up a hospital that welcomed everyone, regardless of rank or wealth. He nursed the sick himself, and to support them he begged in the streets, calling out, “Do good, my brothers!” From this appeal comes the Italian name of his order, Fatebenefratelli. He also cared for orphans, widows, the unemployed, and women who wanted to leave prostitution. According to the tradition of his order, the name John of God was given to him in Granada by a bishop. When fire broke out in the Royal Hospital, John carried the sick out of the burning building.

In time his first companions joined him, Antón Martín and Pedro Velasco. John wrote no rule for them; he left them his own example. He died in Granada on March 8, 1550, at the age of fifty-five, after an illness he contracted while trying to save a young man drowning in the river. He died on his knees, with a cross in his hands.

His disciples went on to found more hospitals. In 1572 Pope Pius V approved their community and gave it the Rule of Saint Augustine. Urban VIII beatified John in 1630, and Alexander VIII canonized him in 1690. In 1886 Leo XIII declared him, together with Saint Camillus de Lellis, patron of the sick and of hospitals, and in 1930 Pius XI added to this the patronage of nurses.