The Holy Fool: St. Benedict Joseph Labre’s Radical Witness Against a World That Worships Wealth
The article from the NC Register portal (June 22, 2026) presents the life of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, a beggar and pilgrim who died in Rome in 1783. It recounts his rejection by various monastic orders, his subsequent embrace of a life of radical poverty and pilgrimage across Europe, his countless hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and his eventual death in a butcher’s house after collapsing near the Colosseum. The piece, authored by Zubair Simonson, portrays Labre as a “living saint” and a “fool for Christ,” whose life of destitution was a profound witness to the transience of worldly goods and the surpassing value of the spiritual. While the narrative is factually accurate in its broad strokes and edifying in its intent, it operates within a framework that, by its very omissions and modern sensibilities, subtly undermines the full, supernatural weight of the saint’s witness and the Church’s traditional teaching on poverty, penance, and the contempt of the world.

