John Leonardi

Saint John Leonardi was born in 1541 in Diecimo, in the Republic of Lucca, Italy, the youngest of seven children in a middle-class family. Drawn from childhood to solitude, prayer, and meditation, he first trained in Lucca for a decade as a pharmacist’s assistant, a background that later made him a beloved patron of pharmacists, druggists, and apothecaries. Hearing a deeper call, he pursued the priesthood and was ordained in 1572. As a priest he devoted himself to forming young people in the faith and gathered laymen to serve Christ in hospitals and prisons. In the spirit of the Church’s renewal after the Council of Trent, he promoted devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Forty Hours, and frequent Holy Communion. In time he founded a community that became the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of Lucca, while also assisting reforms and missionary formation in Rome, where he was guided by Saint Philip Neri. He died on October 9, 1609, after contracting influenza while caring for the sick. His feast day is October 9.