Counter-Reformation (16th century)
Feast: March 8
A former soldier who had a public breakdown in the streets of Granada, was locked in an asylum, and then built one of the best hospitals in Europe.
John Ciudad was a soldier, a shepherd, a laborer, and a wandering bookseller before he lost his mind in public. At about forty, after hearing a sermon by John of Avila in Granada, he ran through the streets tearing his clothes and beating his chest, screaming for God's mercy. They put him in the Royal Hospital — which in 1539 meant shackles, beatings, and starvation as 'treatment.' The experience did not break him. It showed him what sick and mentally ill people endured, and when he came out, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He rented a house, gathered the homeless sick off Granada's streets, and started caring for them himself. He begged for supplies, organized volunteer nurses, and separated patients by illness — revolutionary for the time. When the hospital caught fire one night, John carried patients out on his back, running through the flames. He did this twice. The Bishop of Tuy gave him the name 'John of God,' and followers gathered around him, eventually becoming the Brothers Hospitallers. He died in 1550 at fifty-five, worn out from physical labor and constant exposure to disease. His hospital system spread across Europe and still operates today.