| Saint Benedict Joseph Labre | |
|---|---|
| Beggar of Perpetual Adoration | |
| Born | March 25 1748, Amettes, Boulogne-sur-Mer |
| Died | April 17 1783 (aged 35), Rome |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 1859 by Pius IX |
| Canonized | December 8,1883 |
| Feast | April 16 |
| Attributes | tri-cornered hat, alms |
| Patronage | Unmarried men (bachelors), rejects, mental illness, mentally ill people, insanity, beggars, hobos, the homeless |
 Saints Portal |
|
Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1748 – 1783) was a French mendicant and Roman Catholic saint. He was born in Amettes, near Arras in the north of France, the eldest of fifteen children of a prosperous shopkeeper, and was religious from a very early age. He was noted for performing public acts of penance for his sins, even minor sins. At the age of sixteen, he attempted to join the Trappists, Carthusians, and Cistercians, but each order rejected him as unsuitable for communal life. The abbots of these orders suspected mental illness that would make Labre unable to fulfill the vow of obedience necessary for any cloistered religious. By some evidence, Labre seemed to have had an internal illumination, which set at rest forever any doubts he might have as to what his method of living was to be. He then understood "that it was God's will that like St. Alexis he should abandon his country, his parents, and whatever is flattering in the world to lead a new sort of life, a life most painful, most penitential, not in a wilderness nor in a cloister, but in the midst of the world, devoutly visiting as a pilgrim the famous places of Christian devotion". He repeatedly submitted this extraordinary inspiration to the judgment of experienced confessors and was told he might safely conform to it.[1] He therefore settled on a life of poverty and pilgrimage. He first travelled to Rome on foot, subsisting on what he could receive by begging. He then travelled to most of the major shrines of Europe, often multiple times. He visited Loreto, Assisi, Naples, and Bari in Italy, Einsiedeln in Switzerland, Paray-le-Monial in France, and Compostela in Spain. During these trips he would always travel on foot, sleep in the open or in a corner of a room, with his clothes muddy and ragged. He lived on what little he was given, and often shared the little he did receive with others. He is reported to have talked rarely, prayed often, and accepted the abuse he received quietely. In so doing, Labre was following in the role of the mendicant, the "Fool-for-Christ," found more often in the Eastern Church. He would often swoon when contemplating the crown of thorns, in particular, and, during these states, his legend says that he would levitate or bilocate. He was also said to have cured some of the other homeless he met and to have multiplied bread for them. In the last years of his life (his thirties), he lived in Rome, for a time living in the walls of the ruins of the Colosseum and made only a yearly pilgrimage to Loreto. He was a familiar figure in the city and known as the "saint of the Forty Hours" for his dedication to the Quarant' Ore. In his final weeks, he collapsed in church, and was taken into a house out of charity, despite his protestations. He died of his malnutrition on April 16, during Holy Week, in 1783.
Veneration
His confessor, Marconi, wrote his biography and attributed 136 separate cures to his intercession within three months of Labre's death. Those miracles were instrumental in the conversion of the Reverend John Thayer, the first American Protestant clergyman to convert to Catholicism, who was resident in Rome at the time of St. Benedict's death. A cult grew up around him very soon after his death, and he was made Venerable by Pius IX in 1859, with canonization by Leo XIII in 1881. His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is April 16.
References
- Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
See also
- Pope Benedict XVI, whose first name is Joseph, and whose birthday is April 16.
- Saint Malachy's Church, Belfast.
- St. Benedict Joseph Labre Church, Richmond Hill, New York.
This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
