| Saint Benedict Joseph Labré | |
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A representation of the sorrowful mendicant, Benedict Joseph Labré. |
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| Beggar of Perpetual Adoration | |
| Born | March 25, 1748 Amettes, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France |
| Died | April 17, 1783 (aged 35) Rome |
| Honored in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 1859, Rome by Pope Pius IX |
| Canonized | December 8, 1881, Rome by Pope Leo XIII |
| Major shrine | Tomb at Santa Maria ai Monti |
| Feast | April 16 |
| Attributes | tri-cornered hat; alms |
| Patronage | Unmarried men (bachelors), rejects, mental illness, mentally ill people, insanity, beggars, hobos, the homeless |
Saint Benedict Joseph Labré (French: Benoît-Joseph Labré) (March 25, 1748 – April 17, 1783) was a French mendicant, Franciscan tertiary and Roman Catholic saint.
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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 superiors of these orders suspected mental illness that would make Labré unable to fulfill the demands of communal life.
Labré, according to Catholic tradition, experienced a desire, which he considered was given to him by God and inspired by the example of Saint Alexius of Rome, to "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".[1]
He joined the Third Order of Saint Francis and settled on a life of poverty and pilgrimage. He first traveled to Rome on foot, subsisting on what he could get by begging. He then traveled to most of the major shrines of Europe, often several times each. He visited Loreto, Assisi, Naples, and Bari in Italy, Einsiedeln in Switzerland, Paray-le-Monial in France, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. During these trips he would always travel on foot, sleeping 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 quietly the abuse he received.
In so doing, Labré 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, it is said 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 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" (or Quarant' Ore) for his dedication to Eucharistic adoration. The day before he died, he collapsed in the church of Santa Maria ai Monti, blocks from the Colosseum, and despite his protestations was charitably taken to a house behind the church at Via dei Serpenti 2. He died there of his malnutrition on April 17, during Holy Week, in 1783 and was buried in Santa Maria ai Monti.
His confessor, Marconi, wrote Benedict's biography and attributed 136 separate cures to his intercession within three months of his 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.[2] A cult grew up around him very soon after his death, and he was declared Blessed by Blessed Pius IX in 1860, and later canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1881. His feast day is observed on April 17.