Alphonsus Liguori

Saint Alphonsus Liguori is the patron of moral theologians and of confessors because his life’s great work answered the moral rigorism of his age: against the harsh Jansenists who frightened souls from the sacraments, he taught a balanced, merciful way called “equiprobabilism,” and his Moral Theology became the standard guide for priests hearing confessions. Pope Pius XII formally named him patron of confessors and moralists for exactly this reason. He is invoked by arthritis sufferers from his own biography: in old age a violent rheumatic condition bent his neck so severely that his chin pressed into his chest, a deformity he bore for years — so those crippled by joint disease recognize a fellow sufferer who understood their pain.