Saint Benedict Joseph Labre

The Beggar of God

Feast Day: April 16

Benedict Joseph Labré was born on March 25, 1748 in Amettes, France, where He was the eldest in a farming family of eventually fifteen children.

At the age of sixteen, he was sent to his paternal uncle, a priest of Erin, to study for the priesthood. But he realized that he wanted to become a monk. His poor school results ruled out the intended priestly training. He tried in vain to enter various monastic orders.

At the age of 19, he tried in vain to enter various monasteries. However, he was too weak and suffered from terrible anxiety attacks that made him doubt his vocation. An abbot finally told him: “God wants you to go somewhere else.” He does not try to keep it at all costs.

Then Benedict set out on a long pilgrimage. His monastery will be the way, his only companion in prayer will be God alone. After a seven-year pilgrimage through various places of pilgrimage, he arrived in Rome in 1777. At the various shrines he encountered along the way, he stopped for very long moments of prayer.

Benedict was dressed as a beggar, covered with fleas and lice. But completely freed from the goods of this world, he became poor and repentant when he followed Jesus. He walked more than thirty thousand kilometers on the roads of France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Poland. Ridiculed and persecuted by well-meaning circles, he always remained amiable and cheerful.

Little by little, he discovered that his vocation was to be a pilgrim. With a staff in his hand, a rosary around his neck, another in his hand, a crucifix on his chest, on his shoulders and a small bag containing all his possessions, that is to say, his New Testament, Benedict traveled the roads of Europe in a life of poverty and prayer.

Benedict's heart is directed towards God, but he also turns to others. While he lived in extreme poverty, sharing the soup kitchens with the poor and humiliations, always in prayer and always patient.

In Rome, where Benedict spent the last years of his life, he was nicknamed "the poor man of the Forty Hours". In his favorite place Rome, he is often in prayer in the churches, together with so many other poor people in the ruins of the Colosseum, where he distributes to the poor, what is given to him.

He is beatified in 1860 by Pope Pius IX. Pope Leo XIII canonizes him on December 8, 1881.

The Labre Houses for vagabonds and homeless people are named after him.

Miracles are immediately attributed to him; they even contributed to the conversion of John Thayer, a Presbyterian minister.

Patron: of the poor, beggars, homeless, vagrants, vagabonds, displaced people and wanderers.