Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1745 - 1783) was a French mendicant and Roman Catholic saint. The oldest of fifteen children, he was born in Amettes, near Arras in the north of France, and was religious from a very early age. He was noted for performing public acts of penance for his sins, even minor sins. At the age of sixteen, he attempted to join the Trappists, Carthusians, and Cistercians, but each order rejected him as unsuitable for communal life.
He therefore settled on a life of poverty and pilgrimage. He travelled to most of the major shrines of Europe, often multiple times, and begged for his food while giving away any alms offered to him. He visited Loreto, Assisi, Naples, and Hari in Italy, Einsiedeln in Switzerland, Parayle-Monial in France, and Compostela in Spain. Although his choices seem extreme, Labre was following in the role of the mendicant, the "fool for Christ," found more often in the Eastern Church. He would often swoon when contemplating the crown of thorns, in particular, and, during these states, his legend says that he would levitate or bilocate. He was also said to have cured some of the other homeless he met and to have multiplied bread for them.
This life, however, was exceptionally difficult. In last years of his life (his 30's), he lived in Rome and made only a yearly pilgrimate to Loreto. He was a familiar figure in the city and known as the "saint of the Forty Hours" for his dedication to the Quarant' Ore. In his final weeks, he was taken into a house out of charity, despite his protestations. He died of his malnutrition on April 16, during Holy Week, in 1783. His confessor, Marconi, wrote his biography and attributed 136 separate cures to his intercession within three months of Labre's death. A cult grew up around him very soon after his death, and he was made Venerable by Pius IX in 1859, with canonization by Leo XIII in 1881.
His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is April 16.
