St. Leopold Mandić

Who they were

Bogdan Mandic was born in Herceg Novi and entered the Capuchins as Leopold with one dream, missionary work for the reunion of the Eastern churches, which his body vetoed. He was four foot five, chronically ill, arthritic, and afflicted with a stammer that made preaching impossible.

His superiors assigned him the confessional at Padua, and he sat in it for nearly forty years, ten to fifteen hours a day, becoming one of the most sought confessors in Italy. Accused by colleagues of scandalous leniency, his answer is the whole argument: if the Lord wished to accuse him of too much kindness, he would say he had learned it from him, because it was he who gave us the example. The East he never reached he re mapped inwardly, offering every penitent for Christian unity, and saying that his East was every soul who asked his ministry. He died in 1942, and when Allied bombing levelled the church in 1944, his confessional cell was left standing.

Why people turn to St. Leopold Mandić

Anyone afraid of confession. With St. Giles, there are now patrons here for both the fear and the mercy waiting past it. People with stammers and speech difficulties, by his own. Ecumenical workers, by his offered East.

How to ask their intercession

Before a confession you have been postponing. He is unshockable, and he spent forty years proving it. For the stammerer, his prayers and the speech therapist both.