Simon of Lipnica

Simon of Lipnica, priest of the Order of Friars Minor (1435/1440 - 1482), from Poland.

Blessed Simon was born in Lipnica Murowana, in the south of Poland, between the years 1435-1440. His parents, Gregory and Anne, knew how to give him a good education.

Simon grew up with a pious and responsible nature, rich in a natural predisposition towards prayer and a tender love for the Mother of God.

He moved to Krakow, to attend the famous Jagiellonian Academy, in 1454. It was precisely in those years that St John of Capestrano inspired the city through the sanctity of his life and the fervour of his preaching, attracting a crowd of young, generous men to the Franciscan vocation.

On September 8, 1453, the Italian saint founded the first Convent of the Observance, with the name of the recently canonised St Bernardine of Siena, in Krakow.

In 1457, the young Simon, fascinated by the Franciscan ideal, set aside a possible successful and rich future, and embraced the humble and poor life of the Friars Minor, receiving the priesthood about the year 1460.

He later established himself in Stradom (Krakow). The love of Simon for his brothers and sisters was manifested in an extraordinary way during the last year of his life, when an epidemic of plague broke out in Krakow.

The city was under the scourge of the disease from July 1482 to January 1483. Brother Simon held it to be a "propitious time" to exercise charity and fulfil the offering of his own life. He went everywhere comforting, administering the sacraments and announcing the consoling Word of God to the dying.

He was soon infected. He suffered the pain of the disease with extraordinary patience and, near the end, expressed his desire to be buried under the threshold of the church so that all could trample on him. He died on the sixth day of the disease, July 18, 1482.

The cause of his canonisation, taken up by Pope Pius XII on June 25, 1948, has reached its happy ending, following the recognition of his heroic virtues and of the miraculous cure, which occurred in Krakow in 1943 and attributed to his intercession.

The respective Decrees were promulgated by the Pope Benedict XVI on December 19, 2005 and December 16, 2006.