Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori, bishop and Doctor of the Church, renowned for his zeal for souls and for his writings, word, and example. To foster the Christian life among the people he devoted himself to preaching and composed many books, especially on moral matters, in which discipline he is held to be a master; and amid many obstacles he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for the evangelization of country folk. Elected bishop of Sant’Agata dei Goti, he spent himself beyond measure in this office, which, on account of grave illnesses, he resigned after fifteen years, passing the remainder of his life at Nocera dei Pagani in Campania, taking upon himself great labors and difficulties.
Lifespan: 1696–1787
Beatified: 15 September 1816 by Pope Pius VII
Canonized: 26 May 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI, St. Peter’s Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 1 August
“The nestlings of swallows do nothing but cry out, seeking thereby the help and nourishment of their mothers. So must we always cry out, asking God for aid to avoid the death of sin, and to advance in his holy love.”
He was born in Naples on 27 September 1696 to parents belonging to the city’s nobility.
When one is born into a noble family such as the de’ Liguoris, in a great city like Naples, in an age as consequential as the Enlightenment, and as the firstborn of eight children, one is surely destined to accomplish something great. So, as an auspicious omen, his parents christened their firstborn Alfonso — a name meaning, precisely, valiant and noble. And no one would more fully live up to his name than he.
Entrusted to the finest tutors available, Alphonsus quickly gave proof of his extraordinary gifts: at twelve he passed the university entrance examination for the Faculty of Law with distinction — before the philosopher Giambattista Vico — and by the age of sixteen he was already practising as a lawyer.
In short order he became the finest advocate in the city, with the well-earned reputation of never losing a case. But the Lord had other plans for him — a man born into a family singularly touched by grace: of the eight children, two besides himself became nuns, one a Benedictine monk, and another a secular priest. It was not, in the end, the noble world from which he came that God was calling him to inhabit.
Even during his years at the bar, Alphonsus was engaged in what we would today call voluntary service, visiting the sick at the hospital in Naples in particular. Little by little this life drew him ever more strongly, and he resolved to leave the law and give himself entirely to the Lord.
In 1726 he was ordained a priest and devoted his entire ministry to the poorest of the poor, who in eighteenth-century Naples were very many indeed. His activity as a preacher and confessor was intense, and he also nurtured the dream of departing for the missions in the East.
In 1730, during a period of enforced rest in the mountains above Amalfi, Alphonsus fell into conversation with some shepherds and became keenly aware of how grave was their human, cultural, and religious abandonment. This discovery troubled him so deeply that he resolved to leave Naples and withdraw to the Benedictine hermitage of Villa degli Schiavi, near Caserta, where he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour — approved by Benedict XIV in 1749 — which would subsequently take its present name, the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.
Their mission would consist in preaching marked by apostolic simplicity and in the education of the humble. Alphonsus drew inspiration from the Evening Chapels — groups led by his collaborators, both laypeople and seminarians, devoted to the evangelisation of street children: an undertaking that in Naples had met with immediate success, reaching some thirty thousand enrolled for catechetical instruction. In time, the Redemptorist priests were joined by Redemptorist nuns: the women’s branch of the Congregation was founded at Amalfi itself.
Alphonsus loved to teach and preach, and he employed innovative methods including music, which he had studied from boyhood: he composed, for example, the celebrated Tu scendi dalle stelle, a carol heard at every Christmas celebration.
He was likewise deeply engaged with questions of moral theology: among the many works he wrote, the most important is certainly the Theologia moralis in several volumes — studied to this day — in which he addresses questions such as the virginity of Mary and the infallibility of the Pope long before the Church defined these as dogmas.
In 1762, at the venerable age of sixty-six, Alphonsus was appointed Bishop of Sant’Agata dei Goti, in the region of Benevento — an office he relinquished fifteen years later owing to the failing health that would bring him to his death in 1787.
Canonized in 1839, Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1871, while in 1950 Pius XII conferred upon him the title of “heavenly Patron of all confessors and moralists.”