St. Peter Damian

Who they were

Peter was a Ravenna orphan so unwanted that an older brother put him to work as a swineherd, until another brother, Damianus, took him in and paid for his education. Peter took the name Damian and kept it for the rest of his life out of gratitude, which tells you most of what you need to know about him.

He was a brilliant scholar by twenty five and walked away from it to the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, where he would happily have stayed forever. The eleventh century Church had other plans. It was rotten with simony and the sale of office, and successive popes kept dragging the hermit out to deal with it: his writings confronted clerical corruption without softening anything, his legations reconciled cities and deposed the men who deserved it, and over his own loud objection he was made cardinal bishop of Ostia, from which office he petitioned relentlessly to be released back to his cell. He eventually won, and died at Faenza in 1072. Dante puts him high in the Paradiso, still complaining about fat prelates. He was named a Doctor of the Church in 1828, the last of the thirty seven.

Why people turn to St. Peter Damian

Reformers inside institutions they actually love, which is the hard version. And everyone whose duty keeps interrupting their longing for quiet, since he made that commute for thirty years and never pretended to enjoy it.

How to ask their intercession

Before the reform fight, ask for his pairing: severity toward the abuse and austerity in your own life, because he never asked of the Church anything he was not already living. And if you are overcommitted, his real prayer was simply to be allowed to go home and be quiet, which you may borrow.