John was born in Portugal during the year 1495 to middle-class parents. Tragically, at the age of 8, he was abducted by a stranger. Later he was abandoned to homelessness in a remote part of Spain.
He worked as a shepherd until age 22. After that, he got the opportunity came along for him to join the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. This apparent stroke of fortune, however, would eventually lead John into greater misery.
For the next 18 years, John lived and fought among the emperor’s foot soldiers, first against the French and later the Turks. His moral life had diminished because of the greedy and brutal way of life.
John’s conscience was occasionally troubled, particularly by the memories of his early years before he was taken from his parents. And despite falling into a lifestyle of violence and plundering, he had a certain weakness for those who were poor or in extreme distress and would give alms to them.
He was narrowly saved on two occasions from what seemed like certain death – once after instinctively uttering a prayer to the Virgin Mary after falling wounded in enemy territory; and again, when he was falsely suspected of theft and nearly executed but for another soldier’s intervention.
Events such as these weighed heavily upon him, and when his regiment was disbanded he decided to amend his life – beginning with a pilgrimage to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela Cathedral along the “Way of St. James.” There, he confessed his sins and committed himself to live a life of repentance.
Soon after this, he returned to Portugal and discovered what had become of his parents. His mother had died, brokenhearted, after the loss of her son, after which his father had become a Franciscan monk.
At age 42, John returned to Spain and led a life of shepherd again with faith in God that he had regained.
He traveled briefly to North Africa, seeking to help Christians there who had been enslaved by Muslims. Eventually, however, he returned to Spain and settled for a time in the occupation of selling religious books and other goods, always encouraging his customers to live their faith sincerely.
He opened his house to the sick and poor– allowing it to become a combined hospital, homeless shelter, and halfway-house, run entirely by John himself. When he was not bandaging wounded occupants or breaking up fights between them, he would go out begging on their behalf.
The Bishop of Granada approved his work, and gave him the name “John of God.” A group of volunteers came to accompany him in his work.
John served the sick and poor for 15 years before meeting his death through an act of charity. He jumped into a freezing river and managed to save a drowning man, but came home shivering and weakened from the ordeal. He lay down in one of his own hospital beds, where his condition further declined.
He died in prayer, with his face pressed against the figure of Christ, on the night of March 7, 1550. St. John of God was canonized in 1690 and has become the patron of hospitals and the dying.