While still known by his civil name, Juan Ciudad, the founder arrived at Granada in 1538. He was to be a resident of this southern Spanish city until he died there in 1550. He had been born at Montemor-O-Novo in Portugal. He was an only child. At the age of eight he had been taken from his family home to live at Oropesa in Spain on the estates of the Count of Oropesa. While growing up and living at Oropesa he worked as a shepherd and took part in two military campaigns.

After the second campaign he did not return to Oropesa but began to travel on the Iberian Peninsula - going as far south as Ceuta in North Africa. There he underwent a crisis of faith and consulted a Franciscan friar who advised him to return to Spain. Back in Spain he became an itinerant bookseller and travelled throughout Andalusia until he finally came to Granada and opened a bookstall near the Elvira Gate - the main entrance to the city.

In 1975 a Spanish company made a film about John of God's years in Granada entitled "The Man Who Knew Love." The film's voice-over introduction described the Granada of 1538 as "a tense, turbulent, dangerous city. A constant stream of travellers passed through it en route to the colonies of the new Americas via the ports of Seville and Cadiz. The streets teemed with mercenaries, adventurers, beggars, prostitutes and petty thieves. It was only a few years since Granada had been taken by the Spanish from the Moors ..."
Dubbed "El Portugués" by those he was getting to know in the Elvira Gate area, Juan Ciudad lived in modest lodgings at the top of Elvira Street from the time of his arrival in the city in 1538 until 20 January 1539. On that fateful day he followed the crowd to the Hermitage of the Martyrs on the Alhambra slopes to hear the renowned preacher, Father Juan de Ávila, preach a sermon. Later canonised as a saint, Father Juan de Ávila is known to the English-speaking world as St. John of Avila.

Avila's sermon had a profound effect on John of God (he will be called that from now on in this account) and he ran home to get rid of all his worldly goods and to begin to atone for his sins. Back at his lodgings, John of God gave away his clothes and books. They had become, for him, the detritus of a life lived more for himself than for God. Then, followed by a crowd that was already crying out that "El Portugués" had gone mad, John made his way to the main church of the city, known as the Sagrario.

There he prayed for a time. Then he went back on the streets of Granada still berating himself loudly and publicly for his sins. Some decent men who had seen his extraordinary response to Avila's sermon decided to take him to see the preacher whose words had precipitated such an exaggerated reaction. Avila received John and took him away on his own to speak with him. First he heard John's life's story. Then he heard his confession and absolved him from his sins. Very significantly, he also promised to be John's spiritual father and guide in the future.

When John took his leave of Avila he went to Plaza Bib-Rambla, the largest square in the city. It was, and still is, a place to see and be seen. That suited John's purpose because he wanted to be seen! Not to be admired but to be recognised and despised for what he thought he had been - a great sinner.
Such self-identification was all that it required for the layabouts of the city to take up the challenge to hurt and abuse John enough for him to pay for his sins. In fact, it all got a bit out of hand and at the end of three days he was completely exhausted from the tormenting that he had received and could no longer stand upright.

From Plaza Bib-Rambla John of God was taken to the Royal Hospital by two men who were of sufficient standing in the city to be able to 'sign him in'. They asked that John be put in a quiet place where he could rest. However the chief warder had already seen John in his 'demented' state around the city and had made up his mind as to what treatment this new 'patient' needed.

He immediately handed John over to the nurses for the common treatment that psychiatrically ill persons received in those days - beatings, and other brutalities intended to shock the person back into rationality. So, they stripped John of God naked, tied him up and lashed him with a double-knotted whip. Then, after giving him a good drenching with icy cold water, they put him into one of the cells of the ward.

John of God was admitted to the Royal Hospital on January 23 or 24, 1539, and discharged soon after May 16, 1539, on which date he saw the funeral cortege of the Empress Isabel, wife of Charles V, pass the Hospital after reaching Granada from Toledo. By this time he had become highly regarded in the Hospital community and spent most of his time helping the nurses care for the other patients.

After John left the hospital he went first to Baeza and then to Guadalupe - a Marian shrine at which he wanted to pray and prepare himself for his future mission in Granada. On his return to Granada John did not have lodgings or sufficient money to rent a place to live. He encountered a substantial citizen of Granada, Don Miguel Abiz de Venegas, who offered him a place to sleep in the entrance to his house. In his daily rounds John was meeting men and women who, as he had been, were without anywhere to stay. John's first reaction was to resolve to do something about this situation as soon as possible. His second reaction was, in the meantime, to share his good fortune with the weakest and sickest of these people by inviting them to come and shelter with him in the entrance to the Venegas house. After all, the motto of the family was 'the heart commands'. John thought that the heart should rule in this instance in favour of those who were 'down and out'. This seemed very logical to John but Don Miguel concluded that his 'protégé's' good impulses in favour of the poor and sick should be directed away from the Venegas home to a more appropriate part of the city.

So, from the Venegas house, John of God went to the fish market area in the centre of the city to sleep at night. At first he went to a night refuge that some disciples of St. John of Avila were running near the fish market. There he helped out and had a place where he could sleep. Being 'the man on the spot' throughout the day John gradually became the person of reference for the refuge and, in due course, he got a place of his own near by. This place was more of a hospice or hospital and less of a night refuge. Consequently sick people could stay there and did not have to be sent out onto the streets for the day.

It was from here that John established himself as a selfless carer of those who were in need of help to deal with their poverty, sickness and general state of emargination. He went out every day seeking alms for his work. However, he was just as ready to give alms as to receive them! His very evident goodness and his constant orientation towards God and His Reign brought the people of Granada to give up calling him "El Portugués" or "El Loco" and to refer to him as "that one of God" or "John of God".

There is a street in Granada called Calle Colcha. The Brotherhood that carries on John of God's work today throughout the world was born in this street. A man named Antón Martín had come to Granada to obtain the execution of one Pedro Velasco who had murdered his brother. It seems as though this was not a very clear-cut case and the authorities, favouring somewhat their fellow Granadino, Pedro Velasco, delayed its conclusion. At the same time many people who knew the two men involved asked Antón to pardon his enemy. One day John of God met Antón in Calle Colcha and, desperate to touch the man's heart, he dropped to his knees and asked him, in memory of the Passion of Christ, to forgive the man whom he believed had wronged him and his family. This time Antón was moved to forgiveness and he and John went straight to the prison where Antón withdrew his accusation and Pedro was released. Then both men asked John if they could live with him at his house in the fish market area and help him in his work. These were the first of the men who gathered around John and called themselves brothers of John of God.

John of God spent about eighteen months in the fish market area of the city before it became obvious to his friends and supporters that he needed a bigger place for his work. So with their help, in 1541, John bought an empty convent in Calle Los Gomeles. It was very near the Pomegranates Gate that opens into the gardens of the Alhambra. John of God used to go through this gate almost every day. First of all to meet his 'ashamed poor' who would be strolling in the lower grounds of the Alhambra woods trying not to look like people waiting for charity. John used to go also through the gate whenever he visited the confessor that St. John of Avila had assigned him. His name was Father Luis Perez Portillo and he lived in the Alhambra as tutor of the children of the Governor of the Alhambra, Count Tendilla, Don Iñigo López de Mendoza.

An observer in Granada in those days could have described John of God as a 'man-about-town' in the most literal sense of the term. He went out almost every day. He was in and out of the Bishop's Palace, he knew equally well the houses of both the wealthy and the poor, he visited inns and brothels, lawyers' offices, merchants, shops, the market place, the prison and so on. One of the places where John of God called every day was the Casa Los Pisas. This was the home of Doña Ana Osorio (the wife of Don Veinticuatro García de Pisa). Here, at the end of his daily questing John of God would enter the courtyard and sit by the fountain, take a drink of water and chat with the mistress of the house or anyone else who was around. More often than not, John of God got something here to take back to his poor. From this house it was only a few minutes walk to the hospital in Los Gomeles.

Constant travel, the terrible cold of Granada, the service that John of God rendered to people all over the city, all combined eventually to wear him out and bring him down. In late 1549 he became increasingly ill and plagued by constant and intense pain all over his body. Soon he became so thin, and feeble and exhausted that he could no longer hide his condition and was forced to take to his bed. John of God revealed something of his feelings at that time in his third and final letter to one of his most loyal benefactors, the Duchess of Sessa. He wrote: "I have always loved both yourself and your husband the good Duke de Sessa so very much that I could never forget you. I am writing this letter to you now for this very reason, since I do not know whether I shall ever see and talk with you again. May Jesus Christ see and speak with you on my behalf. My illness is causing me so much pain that I can hardly speak and I don't even know whether I can finish this letter. I want to see you so much. Pray to Jesus Christ so that He may be served and grant me the health that He knows I need in order to do penance for my sins. If He grants me the necessary health so as to serve Him, then as soon as I get well I would like to come and visit you ..."

Towards the end of February 1559, Doña Ana realised that John of God had stopped making his almost daily call at her house. She went to visit him and, finding him ill, begged him to go home with her to where he could have a bed and whatever he needed. John refused, saying that he did not want to be taken away from his poor because he wanted to die and be buried amongst them. Doña Ana immediately contacted the Archbishop who wrote a note to John putting him under obedience to go to the Los Pisas house where he could be looked after properly.

At Casa de Los Pisas John of God was taken to a room and dressed him in a nightshirt. Doctors were summoned to treat him and medicines and everything else that he needed were provided. The Archbishop of Granada, Don Pedro Guerrero came to see him at Los Pisas. He encouraged John to prepare himself for his final journey to Eternity and told him that he could put his mind at rest about what would happen to his poor and his debts - the Archbishop himself would take care of them.
John of God called for his companion Antón Martín and entrusted to him the continuation of his work. Then he knew that his time had come. He rose from the bed and, taking his crucifix in his hands, he knelt on the floor for a few minutes. Then John said his last words: "Jesus, Jesus, into your hands I commend my soul." He did not immediately topple over and his body remained in the kneeling position. The moment of death occurred in the early hours of Saturday, thirty minutes after Matins on the eighth of March in the year one thousand five hundred and fifty.

by Brian O'Donnell o.h. -
based on his booklet "Welcome to My Granada".