This site follows the traditional Roman calendar of 1962, as found in the 1962 Roman Missal used at the Traditional Latin Mass. Some feast days fall on different dates than in the General Roman Calendar of 1969, revised after the Second Vatican Council.
Beati misericordes, quoniam ipsi misericordiam consequentur.
Matthew 5:7
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
His Life
John was born in 1390 in the small town of Kęty (in Latin, Kenty, from which he takes the name Cantius), not far from Kraków in southern Poland. He studied at the University of Kraków, was ordained a priest, and spent most of his long life there teaching Sacred Scripture and theology. His learning was joined to a deep humility, and his students remembered him as much for his holiness as for his lectures.
For a time he was sent as parish priest to Olkusz. Fearing the great responsibility of the care of souls, he afterward returned to his chair at the university. He lived very austerely, sleeping little and on the floor, eating sparingly, and for many years abstaining from meat altogether. He went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and four times he made the journey to Rome on foot.
His charity to the poor was boundless. Whatever he had he gave away, and more than once he gave his own cloak and shoes to a beggar and walked home in his long cassock so that no one would notice. Once, robbed on the road, he told the thieves he had nothing more; then, remembering coins sewn into his cloak, he ran after them to hand those over too. Struck by his honesty, the robbers returned everything they had taken. A beloved tradition, shown in the painting above, tells how he comforted a weeping servant girl who had broken her master’s jug and made it whole again.
He died in Kraków on Christmas Eve, 1473, at the age of eighty-three. Pope Clement XIII canonized him in 1767, and he is honoured as a patron of Poland and Lithuania and of university scholars.
Collect
Latin
Da, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, sancti Joannis Confessoris exemplo in scientia Sanctorum proficientes atque aliis misericordiam exhibentes; ejus meritis, indulgentiam apud te consequamur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
English
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that, following the example of blessed John, Thy Confessor, we may advance in the knowledge of the Saints and, by showing mercy to others, obtain Thy forgiveness through his merits. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Sancte Joannes Cantie, ora pro nobis.
St. John Cantius, pray for us.
Image: Taddeo (Tadeusz) Kuntze, Miracle of St. John Cantius, c. 1767. National Museum in Kraków. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. (source)
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