Saint Who?
Saints Who Battled the Devil
Saint Paul of the Cross
Priest and founder († 1775) Feast: October 20
Paul Francis Danei was born in Italy in 1694. Prompted by a vision, he began the Passionist order, whose members vowed to spread devotion to the Passion. His vocation was viciously attacked. “The devil used to suggest great fears to me…interior desolation, melancholy, and dread. I felt that I would not succeed in persevering in my manner of living. The devil gave me fancies that I had been taken, that I should serve God in some other way.” He lost all sense of devotion. “Everyone seemed happy except me,” he wrote.
However, his new order became a powerful force for conversion and holiness, its members in demand as preachers and spiritual directors. Meanwhile the demons continued their opposition, and often attacked Paul. Sometimes they caused sickness, and once appeared as a group of physicians foretelling his imminent death.
Yet Paul’s writings evidence good humor, enthusiasm, and confidence in God despite desolation and pain. To one friend he wrote, “You have signs as clear as the sun that the Lord wishes to make you holy, and you allow yourself to be upset by the devil with scarecrows of being damned? Never again tell me such things…. Oh, how much I desire that you repose on the bosom of the Heavenly Father!” He died in 1775, and was canonized in 1867.
Heavenly Father, through the prayers of
Saint Paul of the Cross, protect us
from all attacks on vocations.
