San juan de dios biography channel

John of God was a Portuguese-born soldier who, at 27, joined the army to escape being forced to marry a girl he did not love. As a soldier, he was hardly a model of holiness, taking part in the gambling, drinking, and pillaging that his comrades enjoyed. One day, he was thrown from a stolen horse near the French lines. Frightened that he would be captured or killed, he vowed to change his life.

After he left the army, he worked as a shepherd for many years. Then, at 38, he decided that he should go to Africa to ransom Christian captives. He left his shepherding and set off for the port of Gibraltar. After several years as a construction worker, using his earnings to help the poor, he returned to Spain. John was positive that God wanted him to start a hospital for the poor who received inadequate treatment, if any, from the other hospitals, but people thought of him as a madman.

He decided to try to finance his plan by selling wood in the square.

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At night, he took what little money he had earned and brought food and comfort to the poor living in abandoned buildings and under bridges. Thus his first hospital was the streets of Granada. Eventually, he was able to rent a house in order to move his nursing ministry inside. According to his original biography, his mother died from grief soon after this, and his father joined the Franciscan Order.

The young Cidade soon found himself a homeless orphan in the streets of Oropesanear ToledoSpain.

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There, in a foreign land, he had no one to care for him, nothing on which to live, and he had to be content with whatever food he could find. He was eventually taken in by a man called Francisco Mayoral and the boy settled down as a shepherd caring for his sheep in the countryside. The farmer was so pleased with Cidade's strength and diligence that he wanted him to marry his daughter and to become his heir.

While serving there, he was appointed to guard an enormous amount of loot, much of which had been rifled by the time he was relieved. Suspicion naturally fell on Cidade; even if he had not been involved in the theft, at the least he was guilty of dereliction of duty. He was condemned to death, and that would have been his fate had not some more tolerant officer intervened to win his pardon.

Disillusioned by this turn of events after what he felt was faithful military service, Cidade returned to the farm in Oropesa.

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He then spent four years again following a pastoral life. This went on until the day that the Count and his troops marched by, on their way to fight in Hungary against the Turks. Still unmarried, he immediately decided to enlist with them and left Oropesa for a final time. For the next 18 years he served as a trooper in various parts of Europe.

Then Cidade found himself so close to his homeland, he decided to return to his hometown and to see what he could learn of the family he had lost so many years before. By that time, he had forgotten his parents' names but retained enough information from his childhood that he was able to track down an uncle he had still living in the town. He learned their fate from this uncle and, realizing that he no longer had real ties to the region, returned to Spain.

Cidade arrived near Sevillewhere he soon found work herding sheep, which was familiar to him. With the time now available to him to ponder his life, he began to realize that this occupation no longer satisfied him, and he felt a desire to see Africa and possibly give his life as a martyr through working to free Christians enslaved there. He set out for the Portuguese territory of Ceuta located on the northern coast of Africa.

On the way, he befriended a Portuguese knight also traveling there with his wife and daughters, who was being exiled to that region by the King of Portugal for some crime he had committed. When they arrived in the colony, the knight found that the few possessions the family had been able to take with them had been stolen, leaving them penniless. Additionally the entire family had become ill.

Having no other recourse, the knight appealed to Cidade for his help. He promised to care for the family and began to nurse them and found work to provide them with food, despite the poor treatment poor citizens received at the hands of the colony's rulers. The desertion of one of Cidade's coworkers to a nearby Muslim city in order to escape this treatment which meant his conversion to that faith led to a growing feeling of despair in him.

Troubled and feeling spiritually lost from his failure to practice his faith during his years of military service, he went to the Franciscan friary in the colony. There he was advised that his desire to be in Africa was not working to his spiritual growth and that he should consider returning to Spain. He decided to do this. It was during this period of his life that Cidade is said to have had a vision of the Infant Jesuswho bestowed on him the name by which he was later known, John of Godalso directing him to go to Granada.

At age 42, he had what was perceived at the time as an acute mental breakdown. Moved by the sermon, he engaged in a public beating of himself, begging mercy and wildly repenting for his past life. He was incarcerated in the area of the Royal Hospital reserved for the mentally ill and received the treatment of the day, which was to be segregated, chained, flogged, and starved.

John gained peace of heart and shortly san juan de dios biography channel left the hospital to begin work among the poor. Around this time, he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, where it is said he experienced a vision of Mary, who encouraged him to work with the poor. He established a house where he wisely tended to the needs of the sick poor, at first doing his own begging.

Many stories are related of the heavenly guests who visited him during the early days of his immense tasks, which were lightened at times by the archangel Raphael in person.

San juan de dios biography channel: Saint John of God

To put a stop to his custom of exchanging his cloak with any beggar he chanced to meet, Sebastian Ramirez, Bishop of Tuihad a religious habit made for him, which was later adopted in all its essentials as the religious garb of his followers, and the bishop imposed on him for all time the name given him by the Infant Jesus, John of God. Slowly John drew to himself a dedicated circle of disciples who felt called to join him in this service.

He organized his followers into the Order of Hospitallers, who were approved by the Holy See in as the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of Godwho care for the sick in countries around the world. One mark of honour to his labours is that this order has been officially entrusted with the medical care of the pope. When John of God died the successor of the order was Pedro Soriano.

John of God died on March 8,his 55th birthday, in Granada. He died of pneumonia after he had plunged into a river to save a young man from drowning. His body was initially buried in the Church of Our Lady of the Victories, belonging to the Minim friarsand remained there until November 28,when the Hospitaller Brothers had his relics moved to the church of their hospital in the city.

His feast day is celebrated on March 8. A church was erected in to house his remains. On October 26,they were transferred to that church, now protected by the Knights of Saint John of God. The church has been raised to the rank of a basilica. The order maintains a presence in 53 countries, operating more than hospitals, services, and centers serving a range of medical needs in addition to mental health and psychiatry.

The Family of Saint John of God, as those who commit to his vision are called, is made up of more than 45, members, brothers and co-workers, and supported by tens of thousands of benefactors and friends who identify with and support the work of the order for sick and needy people across the world.