����������� ������������������ Brian O’Donnell O.H. SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 1 1/2/06, 11:56 AM SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 2 1/2/06, 11:56 AM John of God father of the poor The Story of St. John of God Retold for our Times Brian O’Donnell O.H. SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 1 1/2/06, 11:56 AM Introduction ope Félix de Vega Carpio, the Spanish playwright of the 16th century, was so impressed by John Lof God’s story that he marvelled: “John of God, what novel could be like your life.” I could not agree more! And from experience I can say that it is even more fascinating to tell John of God’s story than it is to hear it. Nobody has told John of God’s story better than his fi rst biographer, Francisco de Castro, whose“Story of the Life and Holy Works of John of God, and the Institution of his Order and the Beginnings of His Hospital” was written within thirty years of John’s death. It drew on the knowledge of John of God that inspired and underpinned the daily life of Granada’s John of God Hospital of which Castro was the Rector. However, when the Australasian Province of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God decided to publish this illustrated book as part of its Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1997 a text was required that would be more concise than Castro’s and also take into account the fruits of recent research into the saint’s life. Most of today’s new insights into the events of John of God’s life, and new data, have been brought forward in two recent publications - José Maria Javierre’s Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, and José Sánchez Martínez’s ‘Kénosis-Diakonía’ en el itinerario espiritual de San Juan de Dios. I have drawn extensively on both documents in this retelling. In some chronological choices I have been infl uenced by the research and publications of Brother Giuseppe Magliozzi of the Order’s Roman Province. I agreed to write this story and it was a pleasure and a privilege to do so. However it was also mortifi cation. I anguished every time I had to truncate an incident in John of God’s life or was not able to explore various possibilities that offer themselves in explanation of some events. Only occasionally have I left out, or paraphrased, John of God’s words when they are part of an event. The basic facts of John of God’s life come to us from Castro and, in order to avoid repetitious endnotes, I have not given specifi c attribution to him. The need to be succinct compelled me to pass over some episodes in John of God’s life. When a choice had to be made I left out incidents that seem to have been recounted originally mainly to encourage piety in the reader. In a story of John of God retold in our more critical times such episodes are more likely to have the opposite effect. For the complete story, I invite the reader to go to Castro’s original story that I have merely retold. That story was written in times when few people had a calendar, or even a clock. Events were remembered in terms of “it happened on the Feast of St. James”, or “he was born on the day the 2 SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 2 1/2/06, 11:56 AM Duke arrived home with his new bride”. Consequently, people who like to know the precise date of an event could be disappointed in my narration. I suggest to them that they could allow the lack of chronological precision to evoke a sense of the times in which the story unfolded. As could be expected in regard to a story that focuses on the 16th century it contains some inconsistencies and ambiguities. Such questions were addressed at a meeting of some of the Order’s students of the life and times of St. John of God that took place at Granada from 1 to 4 April 1997. When I have had to resolve incongruence in the story I have been infl uenced by the consensus of that meeting or the more convincing interpretations that emerged at it. In order to achieve the immediacy in language necessary in a retelling for our times, instead of using existing translations, I have translated John of God’s words again directly from the original text of Francisco de Castro. Finally, I chose to include “Father of the Poor” in the title of this work because that is the title by which the ordinary people of Granada remember John of God today and with which they greet and salute his statue or remains whenever they are carried in procession through the streets of their city. Brian O’Donnell O.H. Sydney December 10, 1997 (50th anniversary of the fi rst foundation of the Order in Australia) 3 SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 3 1/2/06, 11:56 AM � ����������������� ����������� ������� ������ ����������� ���� �������� � ���� ������� ������ ��� � ��������� �� ���� ����� ���������������������� ������������ ���� ���� � ���������� ���� �� ������� ��������� �� ��������� ����� � ������ ����������� ���� ���� ��������������� ������� ���������������� ������� ���� ����� �������� ����� ���� ���� ��������� ������� ����������� ��������� ����� ��������� 4 SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 4 1/2/06, 11:57 AM 8 March 1550 n Saturday, 8 March, 1550, the city of Granada in southern Spain awoke to the expected, but Ounwelcome, news that: “John of God has died. The Father of the Poor is dead!” Amongst the fi rst to receive the dreaded tidings were John of God’s companions, and the poor and sick, at his hospital on Los Gomeles Rise. Then the news spread rapidly through the market place and streets of the city and people began to make their way to Casa de Los Pisa, the family home of Don García de Pisa, where John had died. By nine o’clock the crowd in front of the Casa de Los Pisa overfl owed into the nearby Plaza Nueva. Most of the people in the plaza were Granadinos of the lower stratas of society - they had to fall back and give place to the nobles and leading citizens who pushed past them to enter the house to view the body of the holy man or, at least, to secure a fi tting place in the funeral cortege that was assembling outside. As they milled about in the plaza the poor were asking one another: “What will become of us? Who will look out for us now that our Father has been taken from us?” No one could answer those questions and the conversation increasingly focused on the man whom they had loved in life and already missed in death. Many of them could recall his arrival at Granada twelve years before when he appeared in the streets of the city hawking books from door to door. Then he secured some space in the market that fl ourished near the main entrance to the city—the Elvira Gate. There he sold his books at a modest bookstall erected under a tarpaulin fi xed to the wall against which he propped his larger volumes. His speech bore a trace of the Portuguese accent of his childhood and, in the beginning, they had called him “El Portugués”. It became known that he had peddled books in the countryside around Gibraltar before coming to Granada. John was a very private man but during the years that followed his appearance in Granada, often in conversations around the cooking fi res and water cisterns of his two hospitals, he revealed enough of himself for people to be able to piece together the story of his life before he came to live amongst them. 5 SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd 5 1/2/06, 11:57 AM Birth and Infancy They learned that, in 1495 at Montemor O Novo in Portugal, he had been born into the family of Andrew Cidade.1 His parents named him João (John) and lovingly nurtured him as their only child. The family was middle class and young John seemed destined to live a comfortable, ordinary sort of life, eventually taking over the family business - the marketing of garden-produce.2 Montemor O Novo lies at the centre of a fertile fruit producing region of Portugal and the Cidades were said to have lived in Green Street.3 John’s destiny was shaped by an event that, effectively, destroyed the Cidade family. When he was only eight years old he was taken from the Cidade home by a cleric and transported some 300 kilometres, across the border, into Spain and to estates of Count Fernando Alvarez de Oropesa where his upbringing was entrusted to Don Francisco de Herruz, a gentleman who owed allegiance to the Count.4 The Granadinos, when they recalled that part of John of God’s story, could be forgiven for exchanging knowing looks. Cidade was a family name that indicated Jewish origins.5 In the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews (even those converted to Christianity and known as the Conversos) that took place in the early 16th century on the Iberian Peninsula, children were sometimes removed from “unfavourable” circumstances and placed with a “good Christian family” with a view to ensuring their proper upbringing in the faith and their ultimate salvation.6 Childhood and Adolescence Don Francisco de Herruz lived at Torralba de Oropesa and made a place in his household for John whom he put to work with the shepherds who looked after his flocks. This brought John under the tutelage and supervision of the flock-master whom everyone referred to as el“ mayoral” (the boss). Taught his trade and guided by “el mayoral”, John grew through childhood and adolescence and passed into young manhood as a well trained and conscientious shepherd.