John of God, our founder, was a Spanish book peddler who lived in the 16th century. He did not belong to a religious order but, with the support of his followers, worked tirelessly for the city of Granada's poor, sick, physically handicapped and mentally disabled.
What began nearly 500 years ago continues today, but on a global scale. Today the Hospitaller Order of St John of God provide a wide spectrum of health care and related services for disadvantaged people in over 48 countries. In this part of the world, St John of God services have been structured to respond to current and emerging needs in the communities we serve.
The Hospitaller Order of St John of God is a religious order of Brothers and an international not for profit organisation caring for the needs of people and their families in the tradition of St John of God. Follow this link for further information on the world wide services.
The story of St John of God, the Order of Brothers and the Organisation he founded have been detailed below:
The man whom we know as John of God was born in Portugal in 1495. We first learn of him as a small boy, called Joao Cidade, living in the town of Montemor O Novo. At the age of eight years he was taken to live at Oropesa, in Spain. His Spanish name was Juan Ciudad. He returned to Portugal only once, spending most of his life in Spain.
John was a shepherd until, in his twenties, he joined the army to fight the French at Fuenteabbia under the Count of Oropesa.He served two periods of army service, after which his search for adventure took John to North Africa.
After some perilous experiences he returned to Spain and settled in Granada where he established a small but successful business as a bookseller. John had not previously been noted for his religious observance but he sold mainly Christian literature which he urged people to buy and read.
His own spiritual life gained a new intensity when he heard a sermon by a well known preacher, John of Avila. This man's powerful words so moved John that, in an excess of guilt and repentance, he rushed from one part of the town to another, crying out for God's pardon. Returning to his home and bookstall, he began giving away all his possessions and book stocks. This greatly entertained the crowd that followed him.
They thought he was mad so, eventually, he was placed in the Royal Hospital. Here he was given the current treatment for psychiatric illness-regular whippings! John was not mad, but he thought he needed to be punished for his sins. He was even more concerned about the misery of his fellow patients and he helped the staff to tend to them. In time he was discharged and left the hospital, never to return as a patient.
John now had a new focus for his life. He gave up selling books and set about caring for the poor, sick and abandoned people of Granada. Within a year he established a small hospital, meeting his expenses by gathering firewood to sell and seeking alms. People were cautious about him for a while but he became recognised as a man of God.
Despite his poor clothing and diet, John mixed easily. He recognised that rich and poor people all had needs and ministered to each person accordingly. In his search for support for his work, he was even introduced into the Spanish court. The visit was an excellent beginning to a relationship with the future King Phillip II which ultimately turned sour. This was to have more influence on the future development of the Order than any other single factor throughout its history. The visit also led directly to the opening of a second hospital in Toledo.
John Ciudad received the title "John of God", from the Bishop of Tuy and a habit to go with it. It was just a common garment of that time. It was significant because the Bishop told him to wear it all the time. This put a stop to John's endearing practice of exchanging clothes with anyone he met whose garments were in a worse state of repair than his own, so he was always the worst-dressed man in town. He was probably the worst fed as well; a typical "meal" for him was a boiled onion.
John died in 1550 after an unsuccessful attempt to save another person from drowning in a freezing river. He left a few followers who had come to him in various colourful ways and from differing backgrounds.
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Of his small band of followers, John had made provision for one to succeed him, Anton Martin. Anton had large debts to clear for the Granada Hospital and attended the Royal Court, which had recently moved to Madrid, to seek help. He got his money and more, because the Prince Regent, Philip, wanted a hospital in the new capital. Although he lived only three years after John died, Anton had time to open a twenty bed hospital in the city. He also saw the Granada hospital make its third and final move into larger premises.
At this time, hospitals were charitable places provided for those unable to pay for care at home and facilities were primitive. Although still relatively small, the Granada hospital was a model for its time. Its first written Constitutions specified "one bed-one patient" in contrast to the general practice of cramming several people into oversize beds with others underneath. Cleanliness was stressed; patients who were fit enough were bathed on admission, nails were clipped and clean linen was supplied and changed regularly.
There was always a Brother-pharmacist on duty with a second training alongside him. Biographers credit St John of God with being the father of modern pharmacy.
Anton Martin would have preferred the Madrid Hospital to be a community hospital of modest size like the one in Granada but Prince Philip's intention was to have a large teaching hospital so it grew rapidly in size and importance. This prominent facility attracted more vocations and as there were always four brothers training as surgeons at the university, there was a very high percentage of surgeons amongst the brothers and some reached the very top of their profession.
Fifteen years after the death of John of God, a Moorish revolution broke out on the outskirts of Granada. Six of the brothers who had earlier seen military service organised aid posts along the battle lines, tending the wounded, burying the dead and searching the area each evening when the battles subsided to find lost children and reunite them with their mothers. They treated casualties on both sides, Christian and Moslem alike.
This work put enormous pressure on space with as many as 400 patients in the hospital at one time. This event established a tradition of working as medical corps, which continued for several hundred years. Both King Philip II and his half-brother, Don John of Austria, took particular advantage of their services.
Spain was a great seagoing nation so the Brothers' caring services were extended to the Spanish fleet and, later the Portuguese. They were under royal patronage and had a reputation for good management and good care, so the brothers were encouraged and expected to take control of existing hospitals or establish new ones all along the great maritime routes. Broadly these were Portuguese to the east and Spanish to the west with Brazil a notable exception.
Often the number of beds in these hospitals seemed small in relation to the number of brothers required to run them, but they were always extremely busy places. They catered to the needs of the indigenous population as well as the military and civil authorities. There was always a public pharmacy where medicines were dispensed at little or no cost to the patient and an outpatients department too. The brothers own Constitutions required that there be a physician, a surgeon, nurses, a chaplain, apothecary, administrator and alms collector.
Despite the pressure this put on their resources back home, there was soon a chain of St. John of God hospitals along the coasts of Africa, India, China and the Philippines, with a heavy concentration in Central America.
Everyone wore a habit like the original given to John of God. It was a very common style of dress and impostors took advantage of this to collect money in his name. In 1570, this loose-knit brotherhood sought recognition and a more distinctive style of dress by petitioning the Pope. Two men were dispatched to Rome.
On the way, the brothers began their first work in Italy. It happened in Naples where they became caught up in the Battle of Lepanto. Don John of Austria asked his half-brother Philip to send him brothers, as surgeons and infirmarians for the fleet he was assembling to fight the Ottoman Empire. Of the eighteen brothers in the Granada community, eight were sent. They were dispersed among the Spanish ships with their leader, Brother Pedro Soriano, aboard the flagship.
After the Battle, Don John urged them to stay and set up a hospital in Naples and gave them money for the purpose. Brother Pedro remained to undertake the work. However, he first completed the journey to Rome with his companion, where Pope Pius V was pleased to accede to all requests and declare the six communities, with their mother house in Granada, to be a religious Congregation.
As soon as the Papal Bull was received in Granada, Brothers began to make their religious vows; the whole community making their professions to the Archbishop of Granada. From the beginning, the brothers included the vow of Hospitality, although this was not specifically called for in the Bull.
Their new status gave a great boost to the brothers and their work. Their numbers grew steadily and the brothers in Naples received many vocations from men who had fought at the Battle of Lepanto. Some who had joined them were already running hospitals, some individually, others as Diocesan Institutes. Perhaps the best known of these brothers today is Blessed John Grande, who began his own ministry at the age of nineteen in the town of Jerez de la Frontera.
John Grande began by ministering to prisoners in the town jail then started a night shelter, which he converted to a hospital. He was asked to take over the management of the San Sebastian Hospital in that town which he did-and then extended it; all this before he became a Brother of St John of God in 1575. Thereafter, John Grande spent much of his time amalgamating groups of tiny, inefficient hospitals into larger, more viable units at the request of the Cardinal Archbishop of Seville. These were often under threat of closure by local and state governments and, had they not merged, many towns would have been entirely without hospital services for poor people.
In 1600, bucolic plague broke out in Jerez. John Grande led his brothers in assisting its victims until he himself succumbed. Because of the crisis, he was hastily interred until he could be properly buried in the chapel, a year later.
To nurse females, women were sometimes employed for that purpose, whilst at other times a suitable person might be encouraged and supported to start a separate hospital for women. As a result, a number of women's Congregations and Orders began, some of which flourish today.
It was in 1586 that Pope Sixtus V raised our Congregation to the status of a Religious Order. By then, the brothers operated 25 hospitals, mostly in Spain and Italy but there were 3 in Latin America: in Columbia, Peru and Mexico. This was achieved against the strong opposition of King Philip II, partly because the brothers were now removed from the control of the Bishops. King Philip II valued their work highly, but he liked things as they were because the Bishops were under his control.
In 1584, the brothers had purchased an old convent and the adjacent church, San Giovanni Calibita, on the tiny Isola Tiberina-Tiber Island-in Rome. Even before Pope Sixtus V issued the brief Esti pro Debito, they had decided, for greater convenience, to move their mother house from Granada to Tiber Island so it was here that they held their first General Chapter. The new Order divided itself into two Provinces; Spain and Italy, the Central American hospitals falling naturally into the Spanish Province.
Although King Philip's opposition was at first unsuccessful, the death of Pope Sixtus V in 1590 brought four new occupants to St. Peter's chair within two years and the last of these, wrongly believing that Philip's objections had been studied and were valid, issued a Brief which withdrew the Order's status and left the Spanish and Italian Provinces as separate Congregations. The brothers appealed and were successful but the appeals were heard separately in Rome so, when their status was restored, it was as separate Orders, and so they remained for two and a half centuries.
Both Orders grew healthily and there was little overlap. Spanish growth continued along the ocean routes whilst the Italians travelled by land, extending through most of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula. We can identify 700 hospitals which the Order has operated during its history. The great majority were established during those years of separate development, and there are over 250 St John of God facilities serving people today.
As medical corps, brothers of the Spanish Congregation were involved in 30 naval and military campaigns between 1571 and 1640. The number of brothers in an individual fleet was small; never more than twenty and usually fewer than a dozen with no more than one on a ship. Even so, some 250 brothers were involved during that period.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the brothers fulfilled this role in every major Spanish military campaign. Many were lost in the course of these battles and there were occasions when a whole fleet would disappear without trace. The Philippines Fleet disappeared in this way in 1617 with 10 brothers in its complement; no trace of it was ever found after it left the Canary Islands.
One of their more unusual assignments was to accompany the Portuguese navigator, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, in his search for the legendary Terra Australis Incognita. De Quiros, who was in the service of the King of Spain on this occasion, left Port Calleo in Peru in December 21 1605. His fleet of three vessels was carrying four Brothers of St. John of God in their customary role. Sailing due west, de Quiros came upon the island group of Vanuatu and mistakenly thought he had reached his goal, claiming the territory for the Spanish crown. The fleet separated for the homeward voyage, continuing westward. In September 1606 one of the captains, Louise Valdez de Torres, logged a landfall considered to be in northern Australia. It is a matter for speculation whether the ship actually landed and whether any of the brothers were on board.
Over two centuries, many brothers had succumbed to disease, shipwreck and war, yet men joined in increasing numbers and their works had multiplied. Another problem arose for the Spanish Order, when the Portuguese fought for their independence. The war began in 1640 and lasted for a quarter of a century. To overcome the loss of contact with Madrid, the brothers in Portugal were given their own leadership as a Vice-Province. To deal with the casualties of war, they set up military and field hospitals along the border.
Then, in 1777, Austrian Emperor Joseph II introduced repressive legislation, which brought a dramatic reversal of their fortunes. In fact, it affected religious observance in most of central Europe including the northern states of Italy. This cut off several Provinces of the Order from Rome. Worse followed as the Napoleonic wars engulfed Europe. Although there were occasions when the Brothers of St John of God were allowed to continue to manage their hospitals, in general they were persecuted along with all religious bodies until repression became total in Spain, Portugal and their colonies. The Spanish Order succumbed completely and it was only a miracle of timing that ensured there was a spark alive somewhere in the World.
With the demise of Napoleon, life began to return to the Order in Italy. To attempt to re-establish the Order in Spain, the Pope commissioned a newly ordained Italian priest, Benedict Menni O.H. Brother Menni was supremely successful in fulfilling his commission. One result of this initiative was that the new Spanish communities formed a Province under Rome so that two and a half centuries of separate development came to an end, the situation being formalised with an Act of Unification in 1888.
This was by no means the end of oppression for the Order. It has continued into modern times. The Spanish Civil War of 1936 brought the death of 98 Brothers and the Order was once again disbanded in that country. These sacrifices were recognised by the Church when 71 brothers were beatified in 1992 and the "cause" of the remainder continues.
We have seen how the Order came from Spain to Italy. From there it reached France in 1602. By 1880, the government in France was anticlerical. It broke its contract with the Brothers, who were operating the military hospital at Nancy, and ordered the closure of all the Order's hospitals. Other religious bodies were receiving similar treatment.
The Brothers in charge of these centres blocked the government's move against the hospitals. Working together they announced that their patients, who included several hundred "lunatics", would be transported to the local town halls and handed over to the local authorities. The government quickly dropped that idea and instead it introduced crippling taxes! Because of this political interference and fearing further oppression, the Brothers began looking outside France for their future. Some began work in England then, two years later, they moved into Ireland as well.
In 1929, Archbishop Kelly of the Sydney Archdiocese was in correspondence with an Irish Brother, Matthias Barrett, who proposed to start a new work here. Brother Barrett was based in Canada. He had been anticipating a reduced workload, but in fact he was given additional responsibilities. This, together with slow communications and the intervention of the Second World War meant that it was 1947 before a small group of Irish Brothers arrived in Sydney. In association with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, they set up their first work at Morisset, New South Wales. There they established a school for boys who had an intellectual disability.
This choice of work can be traced directly to France where the Brothers had set up the first facility specifically for people with an intellectual disability. Previously such people were commonly placed in psychiatric hospitals or asylums, but these could not provide appropriate services.
The Anglo-Irish Province had been founded from France; a direct outcome of the religious oppression of the Napoleonic era. Until 1934, Irish and English novices were trained in France so, in 1936, the links were still very strong. It was natural for the Irish Brothers to take up similar work, then bring their skills to Australia.
Australian vocations came quickly and the number of brothers grew steadily. In 1955, still led by the Irish team, brothers crossed the Tasman and set up a special school in Christchurch. A year later, the Australasian Province was created, "The Province of the Holy Family".
It was 1971 when Papua New Guinea saw its first community formed in Port Moresby, to manage the existing Cheshire Home and undertake social work amongst young offenders. In the late 1980's the Province received the first brothers from its new formation programmes in Papua New Guinea. This country has become one of the high-growth areas of the world, leading to the establishment of new centres and services, with more to come.
