Brother JOHN OF GOD DE MAGALLON

(al secolo: Paul)

Born at Aix-en-Provence on 01 December 1784.

Died in Lyon on 14 July 1859.

Restorer of the Hospitaller Order in France.

He grew up in a noble and wealthy family. Paul's father, Advocate General of the Parliament of Provence, died six months after his birth, leaving the responsibility of raising his five children to his widow, the daughter of the Marquis d'Argens. Less than five years later, in 1798 the family was forced to flee to Berlin with the outbreak of the French Revolution. It was here that Paul, the following year, was admitted to the Cadet Corps and with the rank of officer.

For his excellent service record, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, and later the Décoration du Lys. He was a captain of Napoleon's Grande Armée, Knight of the Légion d’Honneur, and Knight of the Polish Order of St Stanislaus.

In 1817, he renounced the military life for ever, and driven by the desire to care for the sick and suffering, Paul de Magallon took the name of John of God de Magallon and set up a group of nurses in Marseille where he later applied to join the Hospitaller Order.

He and three other nursing Brothers left for Rome where they made their Solemn Profession in the Hospitaller Order of St John of God, and the Superior General authorised him to restore the Order in France.

He was appointed Provincial Superior by the 1824 General Chapter and constantly re-elected to this office on account of his dynamism and drive, and built hospitals in Lyon, Lille, Léhon near Dinan, Paris and Marseille for the poorest and most needy sick people.   

He founded Religious communities, the Novitiate in Lyon for the preparation of Brothers for the service of the sick, and lived a life of radical poverty in the community at Tivoli, near Rome. In Marseille he devoted himself to caring for the victims of the epidemic. In 1830 he opened a psychiatric hospital in Dinan and other parts of France.

He nurtured a tender and filial devotion to Our Lady, whom he venerated under various titles: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of la Garde, Our Lady of Fourvière, Our Lady of Victory, among others. On his return from Rome to Marseille with a group of Brothers, he first made a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto to implore the blessings of the Queen of Heaven on the restored Religious Province. Nor must we forget his Marian devotion to the 13th century fresco of Our Lady of the Lamp, venerated in our Tiber Island Hospital Church.

When Pope Pius IX, who had met at Tiber Island Hospital, heard the news of his death he exclaimed: "Ah, the good Father de Magallon! What a Brother!... What a saint!". And the Archbishop of Aix, Mgr Gouthe-Soulard said, "Paul de Magallon is the most living image of charity that I have ever been able to meet in this life”.