Saint Francis de Sales

St. Francis de Sales was the eldest of the thirteen children of François de Sales de Boisy and Françoise de Sionnaz, both of old Savoy noble families. His father meant him for the law and sent him with his tutor, Jean Déage, to the Jesuit college of Clermont in Paris.

Pope Benedict XVI writes that reading St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas led him to doubt his own salvation and God's plan for him. For weeks he barely ate or slept, and St. Jane Frances de Chantal testified that he grew thin and yellow as wax. Then, in the church of Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, he said a prayer he found pasted on a board before an altar of Our Lady, and when he got up the despair had left him.

St. Francis de Sales received his doctorate in civil and canon law at the University of Padua on September 5, 1591 AD. Back in Savoy, the Duke offered him a senator's seat, and his father had chosen one of the noblest heiresses of Savoy as his wife. He refused both and declared that he meant to enter the Church.

On the road from Chambéry, he told his tutor that his will had long been set on serving God as a cleric, and that he was waiting only for his father's consent. His parents were deeply distressed, but his father gave way once the post of provost of the cathedral chapter of Geneva, the highest office in the diocese after the bishop's, was secured for him. Bishop Claude de Granier of Geneva ordained him a priest on December 18, 1593 AD.

The Duke of Savoy had recovered the Chablais, the Calvinist lands south of Lake Geneva, and asked the Bishop of Geneva to restore the Catholic faith there. The father of St. Francis de Sales, M. de Boisy, refused to bless the mission. In September 1594 AD St. Francis de Sales set out anyway, on foot, with no companion but his cousin Louis de Sales.

For the first six months he spent every night in the fortress of Allinges for safety, and only four or five people came to his first Advent sermons at Thonon. In January 1595 AD he began writing leaflets for the people of Thonon who would not come to hear him, later printed as the Controversies. A large part of the people of the Chablais returned to the Church in 1597 AD and 1598 AD, and in 1598 AD the Duke ordered public Catholic worship restored throughout the region.

In 1596 AD St. Francis de Sales wrote that he did not want to become coadjutor, the bishop named to succeed Bishop de Granier in the see. Bishop de Granier chose him anyway, and in Rome in March 1599 AD he sat a public examination for the office of bishop before Pope Clement VIII. He wrote afterwards that God had kept him from being put to shame.

In 1602 AD he went to Paris to work for the return of the Catholic faith in the district of Gex, and preached before King Henri IV. The King pressed him five separate times to stay in France, offering him good appointments and church posts with large incomes, and he refused each time. Bishop de Granier died that September, and St. Francis de Sales was consecrated Bishop of Geneva on December 8, 1602 AD, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

While preaching the Lent of 1604 AD at Dijon, he met St. Jane Frances de Chantal, a widowed baroness. That August at Saint-Claude she confessed the sins of her whole life to him and vowed to obey him as her spiritual director. The next summer she had to meet the man who had shot her husband in a hunting accident, and St. Francis de Sales wrote to tell her how to receive him.

On June 6, 1610 AD, Trinity Sunday, the two of them founded the Order of the Visitation at Annecy. It was meant for girls and widows who were not strong enough for the hard penances of the older orders. Six months later he told her to receive Communion every day, and in 1641 AD she wrote that she had done so for thirty-one years.

In 1605 AD Madame de Charmoisy heard St. Francis de Sales preach at Annecy and asked him to be her spiritual director. His letters to her lay behind the Introduction to the Devout Life, which the Jesuit Jean Fourier pressed him to print. He dated its preface at Annecy on July 22, 1609 AD, the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.

That year he planned a second book, to show the love of God not in theory but in keeping the commandments. He wrote this Treatise on the Love of God mostly early in the morning and before going to bed, and its printing was finished on July 31, 1616 AD.

In 1622 AD the Duke of Savoy sent him to Avignon to greet King Louis XIII, and he made his will before setting out. Back at Lyon on his way home from Avignon, he lodged in the gardener's lodge of the Visitation, so as not to be a burden to anyone. On the evening of December 26 he gave the sisters there his last conference.

The next day, after saying a long Mass, he had a stroke while writing a letter and was left paralysed. When he was urged to pray for his own recovery, he refused. He died at about eight in the evening on December 28, 1622 AD, the feast of the Holy Innocents.

His body was carried from Lyon to Annecy, and people from the places along the road came out to venerate it. The Roman Martyrology keeps his memorial on January 24, the day of his burial at Annecy. Pope Alexander VII declared him a saint at St. Peter's on April 19, 1665 AD.

Pope Pius IX confirmed him as a Doctor of the Church on November 16, 1877 AD. Pope Pius XI declared him the heavenly patron of all writers on January 26, 1923 AD.