Saint Benedict Menni

The typical apostolate of the Brothers of St. John of God is to care for the sick as nurses or doctors. For this reason. from the very beginning, the Hospitaller Order was recognized by the Church as a Congregation of religious brothers with exception of not more than one priest in each community acting as chaplain.

Saint Benedict Menni was one exception, being an ordained priest in Rome on October 14, 1860. In those years, the Spanish branch of the Hospitallers Order died away as a consequence of some Masonic laws issued in Portugal in 1834 and in Spain in 1835. Saint Menni was sent to Barcelona on April 6, 1867, to restore the Hospitaller Order in these countries.

After a long struggle, oftentimes risky, he was not only able to gather many vocations - almost a thousand from 1867 to 1903 - but also founded in Spain, Portugal and Mexico, 22 hospitals for every kind of sickness, especially for mental patients and handicapped children. Those conditions were the most neglected by the public health care at that time.

He also founded a female branch of the Order, the Hospitaller Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Today, the Sisters are present in 20 Countries with almost 80 communities.

The mother house of the Sisters is in Ciempozuelos, Spain where the body of their founder is venerated. He was declared Blessed in 1985 and his Canonization was celebrated in November 1999. His feast day is April 24, the day he died in Dinan, France in 1914.

What is amazing in the life work of Saint Menni is the number and complexity of the undertakings he faced; but, even more so is their validity, tested for more than a century. The secret lies in his true, heroic detachment by which he always considered himself a docile instrument in the hands of God, without giving room to his personal ambitions or human plans.



© 1996 The Brothers of St. John of God