St. Francis de Sales

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) was the prominent Bishop of Geneva during the Catholic Counter-Reformation, prolific writer, and preacher on the interior life, famed apologist, and Doctor of the Church. St. Francis was the son of an aristocrat, and had a life prepared for him by his father to be a senator and husband to a noblewoman, but he discerned that the will of God was for him to become a priest. In Geneva, St. Francis became noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions in his land resulting from the Protestant Reformation, and converting tens of thousands of Calvinists back into the Catholic Faith. For his writings on the topic of spiritual direction and spiritual formation, particularly the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales was elevated to the title of Doctor of the Church, receiving the particular title as “the Doctor of Charity.”