Saint John Macías

He was born on March 2, 1585, at Ribera del Fresno, in the province of Badajoz. ² The sources do not agree on how old he was when his parents died: four, according to dominicos.org and an article of 2025 on the Spanish Dominicans' vocations site, or a little over six, according to an earlier article on the same site. ²³⁴ An uncle on his father's side took him in, and the 2025 article says that is where the surname Macías came from. ³ The 2012 article adds that he had a sister, Inés. ⁴

He never went to school. ⁴ He kept his uncle's sheep, and the Dominicans say he prayed the Rosary while he did it, a habit the Province of St. Joseph also dates to those years. ²³⁵ Paul VI, in his canonization homily, quoted what the old brother remembered of those years, translated here from the Spanish: "O Lord, what favors and gifts God gave me in those fields." ¹ The pope also said that even then he shared his small wages with the poor. ¹

According to the 2025 article, Saint John the Evangelist appeared to him in the fields and told him to go to Jerez de la Frontera, where he first met the Dominicans. ³ The Province of St. Joseph says he met them at sixteen and was told in a revelation not to enter yet. ⁵ The 2012 article dates his leaving home to Christmas Eve of 1605, when he was twenty, and quotes the inner voice that urged him on: "I have the charge of taking you to some remote and very distant lands." ⁴ Late in life, it says, he identified that companion as the Evangelist. ⁴

He walked south, working as he went, by way of Seville. ³⁴ The dominicos.org timeline has him sailing for the Indies with a merchant in 1616 and landing at Cartagena, in what is now Colombia. ² The 2012 article says that in the market there he watched slave traders putting a price on human beings, and that his compassion for slaves and for the native people treated the same way had no limits after that. ⁴ He crossed New Granada by way of Bogotá, Pasto and Quito and reached Peru in 1618. ²³

In Lima he worked for a merchant, who let him go, the 2025 article says, for being unlettered, and then as the head shepherd of a cattle rancher. ³ Paul VI described the same years: an emigrant without means who did not go looking for riches, as so many did, and who as a farmhand gave his charity in secret and taught the poor to pray. ¹

In January 1622 he received the Dominican habit as a lay brother at the convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Lima: on the 22nd, according to the 2025 article, or the 23rd, according to the dominicos.org timeline. ²³ He was thirty-seven, by Paul VI's count and the Spanish Dominicans'; the Province of St. Joseph says thirty-five. ¹²³⁵ He made his final vows on January 25, 1623. ² Paul VI's Italian paragraph says that in his humility he chose to be a lay brother. ¹

He was made porter, and the sources count the years differently: twenty-two in Paul VI's Spanish, twenty-five according to dominicos.org and the 2025 article, more than twenty in the dominicos.org timeline, and "un quarantennio", about forty, until his death, in the pope's Italian paragraph. ¹²³ From that door he gave out food, alms, counsel and the Rosary, to the poor and the sick and to the great families of the city alike. ²³ The Province of St. Joseph says he fed two hundred people a day. ⁵

Both the Spanish Dominicans and the Province of St. Joseph tell of the donkey he trained to go through the streets alone with a sign asking for alms, stopping at certain doors and braying until somebody came out with a gift for the poor. ²⁵ dominicos.org says he also had to bear insults and slander for his charity, as Martin de Porres did. ² The Martyrology remembers him for the humblest tasks, for caring for the poor and the sick, and for praying the Rosary for the souls of the dead. ⁶

His contemporaries in Lima included Martin de Porres and Rose of Lima. ²⁵ The 2012 article makes Martin the porter of the Rosary convent who first received him in Lima and found him work, and puts the two brothers and Rose to work together for the city's poor. ⁴ The 2025 article is more cautious: the only thing known of the two saints together, it says, is that they seem to have made days of retreat in the country. ³

Paul VI insisted that the work never pulled him away from prayer. ¹ He quoted the brother's memory of the convent garden at night, in a translation from the Spanish: "Many times, praying at odd hours of the night, the little birds came to sing, and I made a wager with them over who would praise God more." ¹ The pope spoke of his devotion to the Eucharist and the Rosary, and in the German paragraph of the same homily called him a mystic. ¹

The Province of St. Joseph adds that he had visions of Saint John the Evangelist throughout his life, and that he is said to have freed more than a million souls from purgatory through his prayers and sacrifices. ⁵ The Martyrology's line on the Rosary for the dead is the sober form of the same devotion. ⁶

He died in Lima at about sixty, on September 16, 1645, according to the dominicos.org timeline and the 2025 article; the biography on dominicos.org gives September 15. ²³ The 2025 article says that by then he was so well known in the city that the archbishop of Lima, Pedro de Villagómez, and the viceroy carried his coffin. ³ His body is venerated in the basilica of the Rosary. ²

The Master of the Order asked for his cause to be opened in 1656. ³ Gregory XVI beatified him: on October 22, 1837, according to Paul VI and the dominicos.org timeline, though the biography on the same site gives 1813. ¹² The Province of St. Joseph says Martin de Porres was beatified with him. ⁵ The 2012 article records the last of many miracles attributed to him as testified at Olivenza, in Badajoz, in 1949. ⁴

Paul VI canonized him in Saint Peter's Square on September 28, 1975. ¹ In the English paragraph of the homily he offered the new saint "to the entire Church as a model of the zealous emigrant", who "left his homeland to go forth and to bring Christ to his brethren", and asked that all who had emigrated for the Kingdom of God find strength in his intercession. ¹

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint John Macías, so none is given here. ¹²³⁵ Paul VI proposed him as a model of the emigrant and of evangelical poverty, and asked his intercession for those who have left their homelands. ¹

Saint John Macías's feast day is September 18 in the Dominican Order: the Spanish Dominicans write that on that day the Church, and the Order of Preachers especially, remembers him, and the Province of St. Joseph gives the same date. ³⁵ The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, enters him on September 16, the day of his death in most of the sources used here. ²³⁶

He came to the Americas the way most people did, poor and looking for work, and he was let go from his first job in Lima for not knowing his letters. ¹³ Paul VI chose to honor exactly that: a man who earned his own bread and his sister's, and then the bread he gave away. ¹

The door of a convent is not a place anyone chooses for a career. He kept it for more than twenty years, and the poor of Lima learned to come to it. ¹²³ When he could not go to them himself, he sent the donkey. ²⁵

His prayer was the prayer of a shepherd who had never been to school: the Rosary, said over and over, and a contest with the birds in the garden at night over who could praise God more. ¹³ Paul VI said that it was that prayer that sent him back out to the people at the door. ¹