Jean Berchmans is a Belgian young person Jésuite, canonized by the Pope Leon XIII in 1888.

Biography

Born with Diest (Belgium) on March 13rd, 1599, he died in Rome (Italy) on August 13rd 1621. Of humble origin - his/her father was shoe-maker - and of merry nature he aspired as of his adolescence to becoming priest. He studied with the college Jesuit of Malines. Excel student, his parents hoped to see it continuing a remunerative ecclesiastical career, but Jean preferred to enter to the noviciate of the Society of Jesus (September 24th, 1616).

Sent to Rome to make there its studies of philosophy (1619) it astonished its Masters like its school-fellows there: an exquisite charity and user-friendliness were combined in him with a brilliant intelligence and great emotional maturity. Its diary also reveals the depth of its spiritual life: one can speak about a true mystical union with God.

To the beginning of 1621 its health gave signs of deterioration to which one did not pay attention. July 8th it brilliantly passed its final examination of Philosophie. Shortly after it was found with the infirmary mown by a serious attack of dysentery which carried it on August 13rd of the same year. Its body is in the church St Ignace of Rome.

Nothing extraordinary in the life of this young saint if not whom he lived with intensity and passion his vocation religious and his relationship with the others. The popular devotion led to its Béatification in 1865 and Canonization in 1888.