JOHN OF GOD, Saint. - Founder of the Hospitaller Order of the Fatebenefratelli. Born at Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal on 8 March 1495, he lived and carried out his apostolate in Spain. Taken in as a child at Oropesa (New Castile) by a well-to-do steward, he was a shepherd and farmer; as a soldier, he took part in the war between Charles V and Francis I and in the defense of Vienna, besieged by Suleiman II. Again a shepherd at Seville, he moved to Ceuta, working as a laborer on the city's fortifications and giving away his wages to relieve the poor. Returning to Spain, he carried on a itinerant book trade at Gibraltar, then opened a small bookshop in Granada (1536).
After a sermon by the bl. John of Avila, he decided to consecrate himself entirely to penance and works of mercy. To expiate his sins and draw humiliations upon himself, he feigned madness and was therefore confined in the Royal Hospital, where he patiently endured the harsh therapeutic treatment then in use. In 1537, though poor, with the help of some generous benefactors, he founded a hospital in Granada. In organizing it, although he had made no medical studies, he showed great hygienic and nursing insight: he established separate wards for fever patients, the contagious, the crippled, the paralyzed, the chronically ill and the insane, putting a single patient in each bed, at a distance one from another. At the same time he assisted the needy, girls in danger, women of bad life, for whom he provided lodging, food, clothing, education and work. Around him gathered some companions who, after his death, having grown in number and having founded other hospitals in Spain and Italy, were first erected into a simple Congregation (Pius V, 1571), then into a religious Order (Sixtus V, 1586; Paul V, 1611 and 1617). From the words with which the Saint, late in the evening, begged alms in the streets of Granada: «Do good, brothers, to yourselves, for the love of God», his disciples in Italy are called: Fatebenefratelli. He died at Granada on 8 March 1550. He was canonized by Alexander VIII in 1690 (the bull of canonization was promulgated by Innocent XII in 1691). Leo XIII proclaimed him patron of hospitals and of the sick (1886) and Pius XI patron of nurses and their associations (1930; cf. AAS, 23 [1931], p. 8 ff.). His feast falls on 8 March.
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Gabriele Russotto