Consider St. Jean Vianney, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, August 4, 2020

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. …

In the summer of 1859, the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush began.  Amherst and Williams played the first intercollegiate baseball game.  In October, John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry.  Troops commanded by Robert E. Lee captured him.  He would be hanged on December 2. And, on this very date, the Curé of Ars, Jean Baptiste Vianney, died in his village in France, age 73.

Vianney’s beatification and canonization were among the most rapid in modern times, before the reforms in these processes by Pope John Paul II.  Pius X beatified him in 1905, and on May 31, 1925 he was canonized a saint by Pius XI.  …