Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, also known as the Curé of Ars, was born at Dardilly, near Lyons, France on 8 May 1786 and died at Ars on 4 August 1859. He was the son of Matthieu Vianney and Marie Beluze. In 1806, the curé at Écully, M. Balley, opened a school for junior seminarians, and Jean-Marie, already twenty years old, was sent to him. Though he was of average intelligence and his masters never seem to have doubted his vocation, his knowledge was extremely limited and he found learning, especially the study of Latin, exceedingly difficult. One of his fellow-students, Mathias Loras, afterwards first Bishop of Dubuque, assisted him with his Latin lessons.
The pressure of military campaigning led Napoleon to withdraw the exemption enjoyed by seminarians and Jean-Baptiste was conscripted into the army. His father tried to procure a substitute but without success and so his son was obliged to go. His regiment soon received marching orders but on the morning of their departure he went to church to pray and, on returning to the barracks, found that his comrades had already left. He was threatened with arrest but the recruiting captain believed his story and sent him after the troops. At nightfall he met a young man who offered to guide him to his fellow-soldiers but instead led him to where some deserters had gathered. The mayor persuaded him to remain there, under an assumed name, as schoolmaster. After fourteen months, he was able to communicate with his family. His father was angry to discover that he was a deserter and ordered him to surrender, but the matter was settled when his younger brother offered to serve in his stead and this was accepted.
Jean-Baptiste now resumed his studies at Écully. In 1812, he was sent to the seminary at Verrières but he was still so weak in Latin that he was obliged to follow the philosophy course in French. He failed to pass the examinations for entrance to the seminary proper, but on re-examination three months later he succeeded. On 13 August 1815 he was ordained priest by the Bishop of Grenoble. His difficulties in making the preparatory studies seem to have been due to a lack of mental suppleness in dealing with theory as distinct from practice, a lack accounted for not only by the poverty of his early schooling and the advanced age at which he began to study, but also by the fact that he was far advanced in spiritual understanding and the practice of virtue long before he came to study these things in theory.
He was sent to Écully as assistant to M. Balley, who had first recognized and encouraged his vocation, and who urged him to persevere when the obstacles in his way seemed insurmountable. He had interceded with the examiners when Jean-Baptiste failed to pass the entrance to the higher seminary, and was his model as well as his patron. In 1818, after the death of M. Balley, Jean-Baptiste was made parish priest of Ars, a village not very far from Lyons. It was in the exercise of the functions of parish priest in this remote French hamlet that he became known throughout France and the Christian world as the Curé d'Ars.
A few years after he went to Ars, he founded an orphanage for destitute girls. It was called The Providence and was the model of similar institutions established later all over France. He instructed the children of The Providence himself in the catechism, and these catechetical instructions came to be so popular that eventually they were given every day in the church to large crowds. The Providence was the favourite work of the Curé d'Ars but, although it was successful, it closed in 1847. He believed he was not justified in maintaining it in the face of opposition from many good people but its closure was a very heavy trial to him.
The chief labour of the Curé d'Ars was the direction of souls. He had not been long at Ars when people began coming to him from other parishes, then from distant places, then from all parts of France, and finally from other countries. As early as 1835, his bishop forbade him to attend the annual retreats of the diocesan clergy because of the number of souls waiting to see him. It is said that during the last ten years of his life he spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. His advice was sought by bishops, priests, religious, young men and women in doubt as to their vocation, sinners, persons in all sorts of difficulties, and the sick. In 1855, the number of pilgrims visiting Ars reached twenty thousand a year. The most distinguished persons visited the town for the purpose of seeing the holy Curé and hearing his daily instruction. His direction was characterized by common sense, remarkable insight, and sometimes supernatural knowledge. On occasion he would divine sins withheld in an imperfect confession. His instructions were simple in language, full of imagery drawn from daily life and country scenes, but breathing faith and love for God. That love for God was his life principle which he infused into his audience as much by his manner and appearance as by his words, for, at the end, his voice was almost inaudible.
People spoke about miracles being worked through his intercession even during his lifetime. He is said to have miraculously obtained money for his charities and food for his orphans, that he showed a supernatural knowledge of the past and future, and that he healed sick people, especially children. The greatest miracle was his life. He practised mortification from his early youth and for forty years his food and sleep were, humanly speaking, insufficient to sustain life. Yet he worked incessantly, with unfailing humility, gentleness, patience, and cheerfulness until he was more than seventy-three years old.
He died on 4 August 1859 and just fifteen years later, on 3 October 1874, he was proclaimed Venerable by Pope Pius IX. He was beatified by Pope Pius X on 8 January 1905 and the same Pope proposed him as a model for parochial clergy. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 31 May 1925, just two weeks after the canonization of the other great French saint of the 19th century, Thérèse of Lisieux.
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