in rosin, oil, pitch and sulphur, he was
carried back almost lifeless to his prison. There he lingered a whole
month, suffering more than the pain of death, whilst his mind and heart
were so fixed on God that he ceased not to sing His praises as long as
life remained. He fell asleep in the Lord, the sixteenth of the calends of
April, 1620. It was not appointed that such heroic suffering should be
doomed to oblivion. Public report, the witness of contemporary writers,
the monuments of the time, and the splendor of miracles caused them to be
so celebrated that, notwithstanding the wars, losses and other impediments
which had prevented the Archbishops of Olmutz from considering this grand
and beautiful cause, and reporting it to the Holy See sooner than the 18th
century, the sanctity and martyrdom of the venerable John Sarcander were
not only known to the populations of Moravia and the neighboring
countries, but were also remembered with the most profound veneration.
From 1754 till the time of Pius IX., this celebrated cause was before the
church, and subjected to the usual searching investigation. Finally, in
February, 1859, it was concluded, and the blessed John Sarcander
recognized, as a saint and martyr, by the universal church.

(M103) This same year, 1859, was canonized the venerable servant of God,
Benedict Joseph Labre, of the diocese of Boulogne. Voluntary poverty was
the lot in life of this saint of modern times. Worldly wisdom condemns as
folly, the choice of this devoted Christian who preferred to all earthly
advantages the most abject poverty. God is, indeed, wonderful in His
saints; and as He often chooses what is folly in the estimation of the
world, in order to confound what it holds to be wise, so He appointed that
the humble Labre who, for the love of Christ, led a life of poverty, and
taught mankind the excellence of self-denial in an unbelieving and selfish
age, should be exalted, even upon earth, and ranked among the princes of
God's people. In June, 1842, Gregory XVI. declared, by a solemn decree,
that Benedict Joseph Labre had practised, in a heroic degree, all the
Christian virtues. The necessary investigations and formalities were
continued, and in September, 1859, Pius IX. ordained that apostolic
letters should be issued, ordering the celebration of the solemn rite of
his beatification in the Patriarchal Basilica of the Vatican.

(M104) The year 1859 was also marked by the solicitude of Pius IX. fo