St. Peter Canisius

Biography

St. Peter Canisius (1521–1597) was born on May 8, 1521, in Nijmegen, in the present-day Netherlands, the son of the city's mayor. While studying at Cologne, he made the Spiritual Exercises under Peter Faber, and in 1543 he became the first Dutchman to enter the Society of Jesus. He attended sessions of the Council of Trent as a theologian. Sent to Germany at a time when the Protestant Reformation had left many Catholics confused and without teachers, he spent some forty years traveling, preaching, and teaching in Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland. He taught at Ingolstadt and Vienna, served as the first provincial of the Jesuits' Upper German province, and founded or helped establish colleges in cities including Munich, Innsbruck, and Prague, which trained generations of priests and lay leaders. Between 1555 and 1558 he published three catechisms for students, children, and the general public, which were reprinted hundreds of times and translated into many languages. He urged charity and clarity rather than harshness toward Protestants. In 1580 he went to Fribourg, Switzerland, where he founded the college of St. Michael and spent his last years preaching and writing. He died there on December 21, 1597. Called the Second Apostle of Germany, he was beatified in 1864, and Pope Pius XI canonized him and declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1925.

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