St. Benedict Joseph Labre

Who they were

Benedict Joseph Labre wanted one thing, monastic life, and was refused it everywhere. The Trappists, the Carthusians, and the Cistercians turned him away repeatedly, some houses trying him and then sending him off, judging him too fragile in health and, in the language of the time, too troubled in spirit.

What he did with the rejection is why he is here. He concluded that God had answered, and made pilgrimage itself his monastery, walking over a decade thousands of miles between the great shrines of Europe, owning a cloak, a rosary, and a few books, sleeping in the open, and sharing whatever alms he was given with beggars poorer than himself. His last years he settled into Rome as its famous silent pilgrim: nights in the ruins of the Colosseum, days before the Blessed Sacrament, filthy and gentle and increasingly reverenced by a city that began calling him the beggar saint while he lived. He collapsed on the steps of his parish in Holy Week 1783 and died at thirty five, and Rome's children ran the streets crying that the saint is dead. He was canonized in 1881. The Church names him patron of the homeless and of people living with mental illness, and this page states that patronage without presuming to diagnose the man, which the record does not permit and dignity does not require.

Why people turn to St. Benedict Joseph Labre

People experiencing homelessness, and everyone who serves them. People carrying mental illness, by the Church's own designation. And anyone whose life's plan was refused and who is trying to hear the refusal as a direction.

How to ask their intercession

Ask him beside Dymphna, since these two belong together. If you or someone you love needs shelter tonight, call 211, which connects to local housing and crisis services at any hour. His prayers and that call are not in competition.