Saint John of God in ivory.
João Cidade, later S. João de Deus, left Portugal for Spain at the age of eight for a life of adventure, having been a pastor in Oropesa, twice, and many times a soldier: the first time in the war of Carlos V against Francisco I of France and the second in Vienna against the Turks.
After some time working on the walls of Ceuta, where he dedicated himself to helping an aristocratic family exiled there, he became a traveling bookseller in the south of Spain, settling with this profession in Granada, around 1537.
Around 1538, he converted to a radical Christian life after hearing a sermon by St. John of Ávila. He embraced, with great emotion, penitential behaviors that some interpreted as madness, leading him to be admitted to the Royal Hospital of Granada, where he was treated with the violent methods of the time.
The experience of seeing the mad people treated so badly at the Royal Hospital fueled the desire to treat them humanely. After a pilgrimage to Guadalupe, he dedicated himself to helping the homeless poor and sick. Against all practices at the time, he began to care for them in a small hospital in R. Lucena, which, as it was too small for the 120 patients and poor people, had to move to another building, where he was able to care for 200 patients.
They were hospitals not just for assistance but for treatments. They had a doctor, apothecary (pharmacist), nurses and chaplains. The Hospital de S. João de Deus, by having this team of professionals, by separating patients according to illness and by allocating one bed per patient, is rightly considered a modern hospital.
S. João de Deus is proclaimed, on May 27, 1886, together with S. Camilo de Lélis, patron saint of the sick and their hospitals and, on August 28, 1930, equally with S. Camilo de Lélis, patron saint of nurses and its associations.
