Saint Francis de Sales

Francis de Sales was born two months early, on 21 August 1567, in the Château de Sales in Savoy, the eldest of six sons in one of the region's noble families. His father, known as Monsieur de Boisy, had high hopes for him: a brilliant career as a lawyer and magistrate and a distinguished marriage. Francis was educated at La Roche-sur-Foron and at the Capuchin college in Annecy, and in 1578 he went to the Jesuit Collège de Clermont in Paris. To please his father he also took lessons in riding, dancing, and fencing. Yet at eleven he had asked for the tonsure, and he smiled quietly when his father spoke of making him a senator. He received Communion every Sunday, and his schoolmates nicknamed him the Angel.

At eighteen he went through a deep crisis of the spirit. He feared that he might be damned and wondered whether salvation was fixed in advance or left to human freedom. He found his way out through the conviction that God loves everyone and wants all to be saved, but asks each person to respond. He knelt before an image of Our Lady and offered her his heart, pledging his whole life to Christ. He then spent four years at Padua, where he took a degree in law, as his father wished, and also studied Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. All along, his own aim was the priesthood. His father accepted the decision, and Francis was ordained. Soon his bishop made him a canon of his chapter.

In 1602 he became bishop of Geneva, a city then dominated by Calvin's followers, so he had to make his home in nearby Annecy. He was known for deep faith and a gentle manner with those divided from the Church by the Reformation. His books on spiritual direction, especially the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God, taught ordinary Christians how to live out their faith. With Jane de Chantal he founded the Order of the Visitation.

He died at Lyon on 28 December 1622, and his body was buried at Annecy on 24 January, the day on which his feast is kept. He was canonized in 1665 and named a Doctor of the Church. Writers and journalists look to him as their patron.

Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us.