St. Peter Faber (1506–1546) : Feast Day Aug 2nd

St. Peter Faber

In his famous interview in America magazine, Pope Francis was asked to name his favorite saints. Surprisingly, he focused on Peter Faber, a roommate with Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola at the University of Paris, long revered as one of the cofounders of the Society of Jesus, though not yet canonized. In explanation for this choice, the pope mentioned Faber’s “dialogue with all, even the most remote and even with his opponents; his simple piety, a certain naiveté. perhaps, his being available straightaway, his careful interior discernment, the fact that he was a man capable of great and strong decisions, but also capable of being gentle and loving.”
    Faber, who was born to a peasant family in the French Alps, was the first among Ignatius’s companions to be ordained a priest. While Francis Xavier undertook a great missionary expedition to Asia, Faber concentrated on Europe, then in the throes of the Reformation. Rather than answer the Protestants with debates, Faber believed the Church should concentrate on its own internal reform. To this end he crisscrossed the continent on foot, promoting spiritual renewal among the clergy and winning many new vocations for the Jesuits. He was on his way to serve as a theologian at the Council of Trent when he collapsed in Rome and died on August 2, 1546.
    Though beatified in 1872, Faber was never canonized— until 2013, when Pope Francis exercised the process of “equivalent canonization” to declare him a saint.

“Take care, take care, never to close your heart to anyone.”
—St. Peter Faber

Robert Ellsberg