– Supernatural Hospital Order of St. John of God is commemorating this year 2025 the 475th anniversary of the death of St. John of God, for which reason the Holy See has granted to the institution the celebration of the Jubilee Year. The official opening of the Jubilee and the Holy Door in the Basilica takes place today, March 8, in the Basilica of St. John of God in Granada, where the remains of the saint, co-patron of Granada, rest.
St. John of God, John the City, was born in 1495 in a small Portuguese village: Montemor o Novo, in the Alentejo (Kingdom of Portugal). In his adolescence he was a farmhand and cattle herder. Until the age of forty, already in Granada (Spain), he worked in various trades, and was a bookseller. One day he listened to St. John of Avila and suffered a spiritual upheaval. They took him for a madman and he was admitted to the Royal Hospital, where he was treated as an insane person.
With the sick that almost nobody wants
Juan approaches the sick that almost nobody wants. He became aware of his mission. After leaving the hospital, since there was no madness, he turned to the spiritual direction of Master John of Avila. He went on pilgrimage to Guadalupe, and in Granada he began to receive the poor and the sick, and to beg for alms to support them. The bishop of Tuy suggested the name of Juan de Dios and to wear a tunic as a habit.
He is soon joined by some companions. He travels to Castile to raise funds for his hospital. A pneumonia after throwing himself into the Genil River to save a drowning boy weakens his health and he dies in Granada on March 8, 1550. After his death, his first companions moved him to what is today the San Juan de Dios Hospital of Granada. Since the written Rule arrived later, it has been said that it was a posthumous' birth from the Order. He was canonized in 1690.
