The priest who made Hell tremble, so they sent a demon to stop him. He barely passed seminary. He was sent to a dying village no one cared about. By the time he died, 20,000 people a year came just to confess to him. This is the true story of the Curé of Ars 🧵:

RT @penn_williamE: The priest who made Hell tremble, so they sent a demon to stop him. He barely passed seminary. He was sent to a dying….

He had No wealth. No status. Just love for God and a will that Hell couldn’t break. “The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.”. St. John Vianney, pray for our priests and for us.

“If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy.”. That’s how Vianney lived: every Mass like it was Heaven. Every soul worth suffering for. Every night a battle for eternity.

On August 4, 1859, Fr. Vianney died of exhaustion. 6,000 mourners came. His body was found incorrupt. Today, over 450,000 pilgrims a year still visit Ars. He is the patron saint of parish priests. (Vatican News)

Despite his fame for miracles, Fr Vianney tried to flee Ars four times to enter a monastery. Each time, villagers pursued him in the night and pleaded:. “You cannot take our priest.” . (Catholic Online Passionist Nuns).

One woman asked about her husband, an atheist who had taken his own life. Vianney looked at her and said:. “He is saved. He is in purgatory. Between the bridge and the water, he repented.”. (Fr. Paul O’Sullivan, The Wonders of the Holy Name)

By the 1850s over 20,000 pilgrims were coming to Ars each year many waiting days just to confess. Vianney spent 16 to 18 hours a day in the confessional and sometimes heard 300 confessions in a single day (Wikipedia, Catholic Exchange Franciscan Media). Through Christ, he

Soon, people started coming. He spent 16–18 hours a day in the confessional. He had a supernatural gift: he read hearts. “Shall I tell your sins,” he’d ask people, “or will you?”. They wept. They converted. They came back to God. (Isidore).

“The demon is like a dog on a chain,” he said. “He barks but cannot bite.”. Why was Hell so afraid?. Because Fr. Vianney was ripping souls from its grasp.

Then the attacks began. The Devil tormented him nightly for 35 years. Growls in the dark. Clawing sounds. His bed violently shaken. Once, his mattress caught fire. He called the demon “le grappin”—the hook. (Aleteia)

Fr. Jean Vianney was ordained in 1815 and assigned to Ars in 1818—a village of just 230 people. Most had stopped going to Mass. He fasted, prayed, and lived on moldy potatoes, determined to save their souls. (Integrated Catholic Life)

France was still reeling from the Revolution. Churches were desecrated. Priests were exiled. The faith was all but dead. And into that silence, God sent a poor priest who could barely speak Latin. (New Advent)

RT @penn_williamE: She wore a crown of roses and a glowing crucifix. But she was weeping uncontrollably. What she told two children on a m….

La Salette’s message remains urgent:. -Keep the Sabbath. -Stop blaspheming. -Confess your sins. -End habitual profanity. -Return to God while there is still time. She didn’t threaten. She pleaded.

Later popes confirmed its value:. “La Salette is a message of hope, a call to conversion through inner transformation.”.—St. John Paul II, message to La Salette Missionaries, 1996. Still, many Catholics today have never heard of this warning. The weeping Virgin is almost

Rome responded favorably. Pius IX granted indulgences to La Salette pilgrims (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 1852). In 1879, a basilica was completed at the apparition site—at 5,850 feet above sea level—where the Virgin had wept. Miraculous healings were reported shortly after.

In 1851, after a formal diocesan investigation with witness interviews and theological review, Bishop Philibert de Bruillard declared:. “We judge that the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to the two shepherds… bears in itself all the marks of truth and that the faithful are

What was in Maximin’s secret?. In July 1851, he wrote it down and gave it to the bishop, who sent it directly to Pope Pius IX. It warned of famine, plague, and persecution of the Church, but also promised:. “The people of God will not be abandoned.”. It remains partly.

Before leaving, the Virgin gave each child a personal secret, with instructions to deliver them to the Pope—but only when the time was right. Maximin's was sent to Pope Pius IX in 1851 and remains partly published. Mélanie’s later “long secret” stirred controversy and was not