You're listening to Catholic Sprouts.

Today is Friday, November 15th, 2019.

It is also the feast day of St. Albert the Great,

who we talked about just a couple weeks ago as an exemplary example of the gift of knowledge. Now today, we are going to look at a different saint,

who is an incredible example of the gift of counsel. And this saint is St. Francis DeSales.

Now, a little bit about St. Francis DeSales, he lived during the Reformation in Europe.

We talked about this a week ago as well, but what happened during the Reformation is that

various groups of people started to break away from the Catholic Church.

Before this, there was only one church, but due to various disagreements.

There was groups that broke away, and we know those groups as Protestants.

St. Francis DeSales was a bishop.

He was a bishop of a city called Geneva in Switzerland.

But his whole time he was bishop of this city, he was only allowed to actually go there

two times. The reason for this is because a city of Geneva was taken over by a Protestant

group called the Calvinists, and they hated the Catholic Church so much that it was dangerous

for him to go there. And yet he worked very

hard to guide the Catholics that still lived there. Now, this was a very difficult time to live,

if you can imagine. The Catholic Church endured, of course, but there was so much anger and so

much fighting, so actual wars fought over this, that it was

very hard to remain part of the Catholic Church. St. Francis DeSales, however, was a very prayerful

man, and he dedicated himself to not only keeping the church going during the Reformation, but also to teach lay

people like you and me how to live as Christians better. He was given an incredible dose of the

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