Saint Leopold Mandić

Saint Leopold Mandić was a Capuchin friar and priest who heard confessions in Padua for about forty years. The Roman Martyrology remembers him as a priest who burned with zeal for Christian unity and devoted his whole life to the ministry of reconciliation. His memorial falls on July 30, the anniversary of his death.

He was born on May 12, 1866, in Herceg Novi on the Bay of Kotor, in present-day Montenegro, into a devout Croatian family. At baptism he received the name Bogdan. John Paul II called him a Croat by birth and a Paduan by choice. At the age of sixteen he entered the Capuchin seminary in Udine, and on May 2, 1884, at Bassano del Grappa, he received the habit and took the name Leopold. After studies in Padua and Venice, he was ordained a priest in Venice on September 20, 1890.

He was very short and in poor health, and a speech impediment prevented him from preaching. From 1887 he felt called to work for the unity of the Eastern Christians with the Catholic Church and longed to go to them as a missionary, but because of his health he never went. His superiors entrusted him with the ministry of confessor. He used to say that he would be a missionary here, in obedience and in the exercise of his ministry, and he offered his prayers and sufferings for unity. Paul VI called him an ecumenist ante litteram.

After years in various friaries, among them Venice, Zadar, and Thiene, he came to Padua in 1909 and remained there until his death. During the First World War, as an Austrian citizen, he was interned in 1917 and until 1919 lived in friaries in southern Italy. In 1923 he was transferred to Rijeka, but after a short time, at the insistent requests of the people of Padua, he returned to the city.

In Padua, after his early morning Mass, he would sit in a small cell that served as his confessional and remain there all day at the disposal of penitents. He lived this way for about forty years without a word of complaint. Penitents called the place the “little parlor of kindness.” When he was reproached for being gentle and merciful even toward the most hardened sinners, he would point to the crucifix and say: “He is the one who died for souls, not us.”

He died in Padua on July 30, 1942, at the age of 76, while preparing to celebrate Mass. On May 14, 1944, a bombing raid destroyed the church and part of the Capuchin friary, but his cell with the confessional survived; as the Capuchins relate, he had foretold this himself. His body rests in the Capuchin church in Padua.

Paul VI beatified him on May 2, 1976, and John Paul II canonized him on October 16, 1983, calling him a heroic servant of reconciliation and penance. In February 2016, during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, his mortal remains, together with those of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, were brought to Saint Peter’s Basilica. Pope Francis celebrated Mass there with the Capuchins and asked them not to tire of forgiving.