St. John Leonardi

St. John Leonardi was born around 1541 near Lucca in Tuscany, Italy, and died on 9 October 1609 at Rome, having caught the plague while caring for its victims. Trained first as a pharmacist, he was ordained a priest and threw himself into the renewal of the Church in the spirit of the Council of Trent, teaching catechism to the young, reforming morals, and promoting frequent reception of the sacraments among the people of Lucca.

He gathered companions into a community that became the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, devoted to catechesis and the reform of Christian life, and he labored for the missions, helping to inspire the foundation in Rome of the college that grew into the great missionary institution of Propaganda Fide. A friend of St. Philip Neri and other reformers, he spent himself for souls and for the spread of the faith to distant lands. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1938, and his memory is kept on 9 October.