Saint John of Capestrano, Priest

John was born at Capestrano in Abruzzo on 24 June 1386, son of a German baron who had come to Italy and an Italian mother of the Amici family. After his father's early death his mother directed his education. He studied civil and canon law at the University of Perugia, rose swiftly as a jurist, and about 1412 was appointed governor of the city by King Ladislaus of Naples. He contracted a marriage that was never consummated.

When Perugia fell to the Malatesta he was imprisoned at Brufa. In that harsh confinement he experienced a decisive conversion: tradition holds that Saint Francis appeared to him in a dream and called him to the Order. Once free he renounced worldly honors, obtained release from the marriage bond, sold his goods, and on 4 October 1416 entered the Observant Franciscans at Perugia. He was ordained priest after theological studies and soon became a tireless itinerant preacher.

From the 1420s onward he collaborated closely with Saint Bernardine of Siena, defending the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus (IHS) against charges of heresy and promoting the stricter Observant reform of the Franciscan Rule. Crowds of tens of thousands gathered in the squares to hear his Advent and Lenten sermons; conversions and spiritual renewals followed. He unmasked the Fraticelli, opposed usury, served as papal inquisitor, founded and reformed Observant houses, and acted as legate under Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Callixtus III across Italy, France, Austria, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary. He earned the title "Column of the Observance" and was later called "Apostle of a united Europe."

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the threat of Ottoman advance became urgent. Commissioned by the Pope, the elderly friar preached the crusade through Central Europe and recruited thousands, especially among the Hungarians most exposed to the danger. In 1456, at the age of seventy, he marched at the head of some five thousand men toward Belgrade, crucifix and banner of the Holy Name in hand, crying "Jesus, Jesus." Together with the Hungarian commander John Hunyadi he helped break the river siege of Mehmed II; a week later the land victory followed and the Ottoman advance was halted. Contemporaries regarded the triumph as a wonder wrought by God through the friar's faith and prayers.

On the return journey, exhausted and stricken with plague, John withdrew to the Franciscan convent at Ilok (Ujlak) on the Danube. There, on 23 October 1456, he prepared for death with serene clarity: he asked for the prayers for the dying, repeatedly recited the Nunc dimittis with joy, and commended his soul to God. He was buried in the habit he had worn in the crusade. Immediate fame of holiness and miracles at his tomb led to early collections of graces. He was beatified by Pope Innocent X on 19 December 1650 and canonized by Pope Alexander VIII on 16 October 1690. Since 1984 he has been patron of military chaplains.

May Saint John of Capestrano obtain for us the courage to defend the faith and the freedom of Christians, and teach us today the virtue of zealous love for the Holy Name of Jesus.