St Francis de Sales: The Saint of Kindness

by Gunther Simmermacher · January 24, 2023

St Francis de Sales, whose name lives on in the name of the Salesian order, was one of the Church’s greatest writers. Günther Simmermacher looks at his life.

St Francis at a glance

Name at birth: François Bonaventura de-Sales
Born: August 21, 1567
in the Château de Sales, Duchy of Savoy
Died: December 28, 1622 (aged 55), in Lyons, France
Beatified: 1661
Canonised: 1665
Feast: January 24
Patronages: Catholic press, journalists, writers, deaf people, educators.

Born into nobility and wealth, St Francis de Sales was destined to play an imposing role in politics. Instead, Francis became an evangeliser, a bishop, and one of the most influential writers in the Church’s history. And if we didn’t know that Pope Francis named himself after the saint of Assisi, we could well suspect that the saint of Sales was his role model.

François de Sales, as his teenage mother knew him, was born prematurely on August 21, 1567, in the Castle of Sales, the first of 15 children of a noble family of the duchy of Savoy in south-eastern France. His father was Lord François de Sales (generally addressed as Monsieur de Boisy); his mother was Françoise de Sionnaz, also of nobility. The child was named François Bonaventura. It combined the names of two great Franciscan saints, but they were in fact assigned to honour grandparents on both sides of the family.

As a young student at Paris University’s Jesuit-run Collége de Clérmont, Francis was tall and handsome with blue-grey eyes. He had good, if reserved, manners, as well as promising career and social prospects. He was outstanding husband material. Instead, as a 20-year-old he dedicated his life to the Blessed Virgin, pledging chastity. To please his demanding father he continued his studies, reading law and theology at the venerable University of Padua in Italy. Guided by his Jesuit spiritual adviser, however, he decided to become a priest. But first he went home: as a qualified lawyer.

In the interim, Francis’ father had his son’s future all figured out. He had secured a senator’s post for him, and a wealthy heiress to marry. Life was going to be good. For 18 months he lived the life his father had prepared for him — except Francis was still intent on becoming a priest. Informed of this, Monsieur de Boisy put up formidable opposition. It took the mediation of the bishop of Geneva, Mgr Claude de Granier, to open the clerical path to Francis, contingent on the young man getting the prestigious position of provost in nearby Geneva. Within six months, Francis was ordained, on December 23, 1593.

Francis didn’t seek prestige, though. Nine months after his ordination, he volunteered to be sent to the nearby region of Chablais to evangelise in an almost completely Calvinist area, one in which the suppression of the Catholic Church had been lifted only recently and where hostility to Rome remained fierce. Against the wishes of his father — there was a pattern emerging — Francis and his cousin, Canon Louis de Sales, set off in September 1594 to return the Catholic faith to hostile territory.

Assassins and wolves

They were not warmly welcomed, except by the few remaining Catholics who were too scared to declare their allegiance openly. Twice Francis miraculously escaped assassination attempts and had to be guarded by soldiers of the duchy of Savoy. Another time a mob set upon Francis, beating him. But this, as well as the pamphlets he distributed, only attracted greater attention to his missionary work, and Francis was able to record some successes. By 1599, the region’s capital, Thonon-les-Bains, was again predominantly Catholic.

Left: St Francis depicted in a painting from 1665 by Giovanni Battista Lucini. Right: Monument of St Francis de Sales in Annecy, south-eastern France.

But the dangers were presented not only by irate Calvinists. One winter’s day Francis was crossing a forest when he was set upon by a pack of wolves. For safety he climbed up a tree and remained there for the night. By morning he was discovered by local peasants who took him in and nursed the frozen priest back to health, thereby saving his life. These peasants were Calvinists, a fact which impressed Francis as evidence that there were also good people “on the other side”. The story goes that he converted them to Catholicism.

But it wasn’t all angry mobs, devious assassins, hungry wolves and kind peasants. Francis’ nobility gave him access to the high rollers in the intertwined worlds of Church and politics, and so he secured alliances with Pope Clement VIII and King Henry IV of France, the dissolute king who later invited Francis to preach a Lenten retreat.

In 1599 Francis became coadjutor bishop of the diocese of Geneva; and upon de Granier’s death three years later, its archbishop. Like his predecessor, he resided in the safer town of Annecy, where he was known for his austerity and kindness. As a bishop he collaborated closely with the Franciscans, who bestowed upon him the highest order a non-Franciscan can receive: an official associate of the Order.

Francis built a reputation as a preacher in the era of the Counter-Reformation, operating in a fiercely Protestant region. But his method of preaching was neither polemic nor of the fire-and-brimstone variety. It was gentle and persuasive. “He who preaches with love,” he would say, “preaches effectively.” In this he provided an echo of his namesake, St Francis of Assisi, and set a template for a future Francis, our current Holy Father.

He put that motto into action in the famous book which he addressed — unusually for the time — to the laity, An Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God. It was a fairly revolutionary book. In its introduction Francis wrote: “It is an error, or rather a heresy, to say devotion is incompatible with the life of a soldier, a tradesman, a prince, or a married woman.” Pointedly he added: “It has happened that many have lost perfection in the desert who had preserved it in the world.”

Among the people whom Francis influenced was Fr Vincent de Paul, who was greatly inspired by de Sales’ books, especially An Introduction to the Devout Life. The two met once in Paris (St Vincent de Paul was our Saint of the Month in September). Francis wrote prolifically in his time, and his mystical writings were received enthusiastically.

He also was involved in founding religious congregations, most notably the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary with another future saint, Jane Frances de Chantal.

Death at 55

Francis de Sales died while stopping over at the Visitation Sisters’ convent in Lyon on his way home from a top-level meeting in Avignon. Over Advent and Christmas he had given the city’s faithful spiritual direction. But on December 27 he suffered a stroke. A day later, on December 28, 1622, he died at the age of only 55.

His influence, however, lived on. When St John Bosco (Saint of the Month in January 2021) founded his order in Turin in 1859, he named it the Society of St Francis de Sales; hence their common name, the Salesians. Likewise, the Salesian Sisters were named after him, as was another order active in South Africa, the Oblates of St Francis de Sales.

St Francis de Sales was beatified in 1661 by Pope Alexander VII — the first beatification to take place in St Peter’s Square — and canonised by the same pope four years later. His feast day is on January 24, the date of his burial at Annecy. Pope Pius IX declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1877. As one who evangelised through his writings, St Francis de Sales was named the first patron saint of writers, journalists and the Catholic press in 1923 by Pope Pius XI.

And on account of the missionaries of the Oblates of St Francis de Sales in the Northern Cape, he is also the co-patron of the diocese of Keimoes-Upington.

Published in the January 2022 issue of The Southern Cross magazine