The Saints: Peter Julian Eymard

1811 / 1868    Feast - August 2

The patron saint of eucharistic devotion. He became a priest of the French Alpine Diocese of Grenoble in 1834.

In 1839, he left diocesan service to become a Marist priest and eventually became provincial of his congregation at Lyons. But, after making a pilgrimage in 1851, he understood that Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, to whom he was utterly devoted, had no specific religious institute.

Subsequently, he founded the Congregation of the Priests of the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, an order of sisters, both devoted to perpetual adoration. He was canonized in 1962.