An exemplar of devotion

The heart of a revered 19th-century clergyman is being brought to New York and Boston from its resting place in Ars, France, in hopes that veneration of the relic will inspire more men to join the depleted ranks of the Roman Catholic priesthood.

St. John Marie Baptiste Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, died in 1859. His heart, enclosed in a glass case, is being brought to the United States by Bishop Guy Bagnard of the Diocese of Belley-Ars. After five days at a church on Long Island, it will be brought to the Archdiocese of Boston for veneration and prayer at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, St. Mary's Parish in Waltham, and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston's South End. Many of the events will be open to the public.

Vianney was renowned for deep devotion to the pastoral duties of priests and was believed to possess healing powers and the ability to read the hearts of penitents. He was recognized as a saint and named patron of parish priests in 1925. In 1959, Pope John XXIII called him a role model whom all priests should emulate.

``We bring him to Boston in the hope that his life and deeds will be an inspiration to our parish priests and an inspiration to others to consider whether they are being called to serve as priests in our parishes," Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley said Friday in a telephone interview from Rome. ``The heart of St. John Vianney is a symbol of his great love of God and of the people he served."

The Rev. Daniel Hennessey, vocations director of the Archdiocese of Boston, said that people who gather to venerate the heart -- which they will do by genuflecting and kneeling in prayer in the presence of the relic -- also ``will ask St. John Vianney to intercede with God for the Archdiocese of Boston, [so] that the Lord might send to us more men who are called to be ordained priests."

Relics -- parts of the bodies or personal items of saints -- are important in Catholic religious practice, not as talismans or good-luck charms, but as reminders of the saints' holiness and as encouragement for others to emulate the saints' behavior, O'Malley said.

Catholic reverence for relics dates to the early centuries of Christianity, when people who were killed because of their faith in Jesus were buried in the catacombs, underground cemeteries outside the old city walls of Rome.

``Christians would gather around their mortal remains in order to remember the love by which these martyrs witnessed to Christ and to be strong in their own faith and courage in the face of possible martyrdom for themselves," Hennessey said.

After the legalization of Christianity early in the fourth century, remains of martyrs were transferred to sites where churches were constructed, and from this eventually evolved the practice of building churches over the remains of later saints who were not martyrs. For centuries, until the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, it was required that a relic be kept under the altar of every Catholic church, and Mass could not be said anywhere a relic was not present.

St. John Vianney became an exemplar for parish priests not just because of his eventual accomplishments, but also because of his humble origins as one of six children in a poor farm family in a village north of Lyon.

``His intellectual ability was considered substandard," said the Rev. Harvey Egan, a theology professor at Boston College. ``He had a lot of trouble learning Latin."

But learn it he did, and as a parish priest he became renowned throughout much of the Christian world. He founded an orphanage for destitute girls that became a model throughout France.

He ate sparingly, gave away almost everything he had, and was so devoted to hearing confessions, counseling penitents, and granting absolution, according to church records, that he often spent more than 16 hours a day in the confessional booth.

Vianney is one of at least 20 saints whose bodies have not decomposed following death, Egan said. In Vianney's case, this was discovered when his body was exhumed in the early 20th century, prior to his beatification in 1905.

Vianney's heart was removed from his body in keeping with what O'Malley said was a French custom at the time. His body remains in the complex of church buildings that has been developed around his original parish church.

The church considers it an ``extraordinary reality" that Vianney's body has remained incorrupt, Hennessey said.

Until the upcoming trip, which begins in New York next Saturday and continues in Greater Boston Oct. 12-14, the heart has been outside France only for the saint's canonization in the 1920s.

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.