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The saints

St. John Vianney

He nearly failed his way out of the seminary. Then all of France came to his confessional.

Feast: 4 August · 1786 to 1859 · The modern era · Dardilly and Ars, France

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The Basilica of Ars-sur-Formans: a modern dome and an older bell tower above red tiled roofs.

Zairon, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St. John Vianney

The seminary at Verrières, 1812

A young man from Dardilly, near Lyons, is struggling at the seminary.1

He is so deficient in Latin that he has to follow the philosophy course in French.1

Only the stubborn kindness of his old teacher kept him going. He was made priest of a tiny village called Ars.

Patron of parish priests2

01St. John Vianney

The Curé of Ars

As the curé of Ars, in a remote French hamlet, he became known throughout France and the Christian world.1

By 1855, twenty thousand pilgrims a year were showing up in his tiny village.1

In his last ten years he heard confessions sixteen to eighteen hours a day, every single day.1

02St. John Vianney

Ars

He died at Ars on 4 August 1859.1

The Basilica of Ars-sur-Formans: a modern dome and an older bell tower above red tiled roofs.
The basilica at Ars-sur-Formans, built beside his old parish church. Zairon, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

He was not clever. He was available. That turned out to matter more.

Live it this week

Thank your parish priest

John Vianney nearly failed out of seminary and became the patron of parish priests. This week, write your own priest a note thanking him for one specific thing, and pray for him by name.

Notes

How we know · 2 sources for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. John Vianney”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org
  2. Vatican News, Saint of the day: “St. John Vianney”. Dicastery for Communication, Holy See. vaticannews.va

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.