St. John Neumann, Pray for Us!

If you aren't familiar with St. John Neumann, fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, please remedy the situation at once. What a great saint! He himself was an immigrant to the United States where he exhausted himself in service to God's people. A gifted linguist, he was the perfect priest to be sent to America where multiple immigrant people often had no priest who could speak their languages. Neumann, on the contrary, was fluent in six languages including Italian and taught himself Gaelic so he could hear the confessions of the Irish immigrants in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania who had no English.

St. John began as a diocesan priest, but desired the fellowship of community life and later entered the Redemptorists.

The Shrine of St. John Neumann

Today is the feast day of St. John Neumann, a wonderful model for what a bishop ought to be: humble, simple, zealous for souls, a teacher, a martyr for his flock. St. John Neumann was all that and more. I made a virtual visit to his national shrine in Philadelphia today, but I hope to go there for real this year. You see, one of my new year's intentions is to visit more shrines in the United States. What a wealth the country offers and some are only a few hours from my home in the Shenandoah Valley including St. John Neumann's. Two easy pilgrimage stops that could be made in tandem are the Shrine of St. John Neumann and the nearby Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, a northern suburb (where I lived for several years as a teenager).

If you've never read St. John Neumann's short autobiography, I recommend it.