SAINT John rouse Christians to battle the Turks in defense of Christendom. A great preacher, he traveled in Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary as a missionary.
Miracles and healings occurred during his sermons so thousands of people attended his preachings.
In 1456 Pope Callistus commissioned him to preach a crusade against the Turks to defend Christian Europe against the invading Muslims. He did, but was disheartened for his impassioned appeals turned to deaf ears.
In Ten Dates Every Christian Should Know, Diane Moczar narrated that John received a divine assignment during Mass.
He saw an arrow with the words: “Fear not, John. Go down quickly. In the power of my name and of the Holy Cross, thou wilt conquer the Turks.”
He spoke of his vision during his sermons, and the response was overwhelming. He was able to form an army, but untrained and deemed unsuitable for fighting.
Sermons with miracles
John, son of Baron Anthony of a Nordic family ancestry that migrated to Italy, was born on June 24, 1386, in Capistrano, Abruzzo, Italy.
After finishing Civil and Canon Law, he took a Doctor of Laws degree at Perugia and became a lawyer in the court of Naples.
Appointed as governor of Perugia in 1412 by King Ladislas, he successfully eradicated corruption in the city.
An eloquent preacher, he converted many Jews in Eastern Europe, convinced more than a hundred university students to join the Franciscan Order, and the Armenians to join the Council of Florence. Then he was named Apostolic Nuncio to Sicily.
However, he was not able to avoid the division of the Franciscan Order into Conventuals and Observants. However, he was able to heal the wounds of separation among them and was elected Minister General of the Observants.
Starting 1439 he was assigned as papal legate by four successive popes to Palestine, Poland, France, Austria and Bohemia, and was lauded for inspiring Hussite heretics back to the faith.
Saintly soldier
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks placed Belgrade under siege. Tasked by Pope Callistus to defend the faith, he was finally successful in rallying 70,000 Christian men to defend Belgrade and Europe from Muslim invasion.
During the siege of Belgrade in 1456, John stood “within sight of both Turks and Christians, waving a banner of the cross calling the name of Jesus,” Moczar wrote.
For three weeks John hardly slept or ate and held high the monogram of the name of Jesus drawn by Saint Bernardine, while thousands of untrained soldiers from the European countries arrived to battle the Muslims.
Priests and religious joined to celebrate Mass and hear confessions.
While John of Capistrano chanted prayers aloud, John Hunyadi, commander in chief of the Hungarian army, had the “defenders hurl all kinds of flammable materials, including slabs of bacon, and ignite them to defend the walls.”
On July 22 the battle was won. Belgrade was saved. The Turks lost about 50,000 soldiers. A few days after, John Hunyadi died. Three months later, on October 23, 1456, John died of a deadly infection in Illok, Hungary.
He left 19 volumes of his writings and 700 letters. He was canonized by Pope Alexander VIII on October 16, 1690.
Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Calauan, Laguna.